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American Viscose Plant, 1929 Few chestnuts bloom this spring. A stinking sleet falls out of drums and ages: cider, snow, then maple sap, it rises up the pipes that writhe beneath her viscose-stockinged feet and spurts into the spin room. Acid troughs, not sugar buckets, catch it, and she jerks it into skeins of what the girls call silk. Sometimes she finishes: she ties, she tags, but she is never finished. Whistles gag the skeins; they keep on spinning in her sleep, the thrum and breathless keeping time to works that pull her out of joint. Acid burns on all the boys. She must mind her touch. Two weeks’ pay docked for hangnails, or a smudge. 13 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 13 ...

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