July 31, 2011Match Girls
In the factories of
America during
the 19th century, girls
hired to make
sulfur matches
would dip the matchends
into a chemical
vat, then lick the tips
to make them stiff.
The vats were filled
with zinc sulfide,
a radioactive substance
about which no one
warned them, so when
their teeth fell out,
and their jaws and bodies
rotted like bad fruit,
it was too late.
It was not the first time
such things happened.
Bent at their stations,
hatmakers in the 18th century
cured ladies’ hats
with mercury. Their legacy—
blushing, aching limbs,
a plague of rashes,
parchment-thin
pages of sloughed
skin, curled and cracked,
minds deranged.
They could not know
they shared a fate
with the Emperor
Qin Shi Huang, who
seeking eternal life,
swallowed pills
laced with mercury.
He built the Great Wall
and unified China,
then outlawed and
burned treatises
on history, art, politics,
and all religions
not sanctioned by the state.
Scholars who dared
possess such things,
he buried alive.
His body lies
in a vast mausoleum,
guarded by
a terracotta army.
Of the factory girls,
mouths opening
soundlessly below earth,
their bodies burning like
forbidden books,
we know almost nothing.
pages of sloughed
skin, curled and cracked,
minds deranged.
They could not know
they shared a fate
with the Emperor
Qin Shi Huang, who
seeking eternal life,
swallowed pills
laced with mercury.
He built the Great Wall
and unified China,
then outlawed and
burned treatises
on history, art, politics,
and all religions
not sanctioned by the state.
Scholars who dared
possess such things,
he buried alive.
His body lies
in a vast mausoleum,
guarded by
a terracotta army.
Of the factory girls,
mouths opening
soundlessly below earth,
their bodies burning like
forbidden books,
we know almost nothing.
from #34 - Winter 2010