"We’re not gonna go on a trip glorifying the pava which is a                                                       straw hat, or the guayaberawhich is a type of shirt, cause                                                           there ain’t no hat or no shirt gonna free anybody"
                                                                                       Juan Sánchez*

Sweat
Leticia Hernández-Linares

Writing her life on a hem line
Hilda watches through the door
for a shift in the light
windows
are choked up holes in the wall
that don’t let the sun through anymore
and an old garage
where rusted tables and tired sewing machines
breath heavy all day long
makes Hilda anxious
for the view she’s missing of overcast sky
and smog

the sewing machines in unison
sound like typewriters
just one word written over and over and over
stories stitched under seams
along button holes
hang in the air waiting to be worn
and scraps of letters
written to no one in particular
collect dust on the fábrica floor

Lupe wipes the lines forming on her forehead
sews S.O.S. messages with bold color threads
that imprint themselves on a young girl’s back
on an afternoon when the air is wet
and cotton polyester blend mixes with sweat
tag sticking to her skin
reads size seven even though it’s really size one
pant legs that fight her thighs and don’t
accommodate her thickness
are flags

Made in El Salvador Made in San Francisco Made by mi tía
Made by una niña     Made in T.J.     Made in L.A.

Made by a slave

Leaning over on cracked uncomfortable slab of wood
Hilda, Betina, Rosa and the women next to them
follow in Betsy Ross’s footsteps
‘cept they’re missing rocking chairs
songs museums statues in their honor
art exhibits displaying charcoal silhouettes
of factory owners
antique renditions of the tiny chairs
clay molds of empty hands
impressionistic reproductions
of the stale air

They
are sewing for their lives
flags of tiny hoochie shirts in red blue white
their countries are discarded pieces of the past
that they throw out
at the end of the endless day
when the crooked door has stopped letting light through
and offerings in silk and cotton blue
left in the dark under skeptical sewing tables
read: querida santita de la fábrica please
let me trade my m-a-i-d
for a m-a-d-e in the u.s.a label

Hilda goes home
to thirsty plants and hungry grandchildren
who pass time looking through floral print photo albums
with spiral binding and fading images
of Hilda’s young body in hand made dresses
and the El Salvador before
before everything

While everyone thinks she’s cooking
Hilda studies for her citizenship exam
faint melodies of the Salvadoran national anthem scorching
the bottom of her pan
tonight for dinner Hilda is burning pieces
of her country’s flag

already torn anyway
made of mismatched fabrics
stained with dead children’s questions hungry farmers’ dejection
and in the end no one has been saved in the valley of the hammocks

so she waits for the day
she can become "an american city"
as she likes to say
and have a new flag
a new flag to put into the flames

*quote from "Tres Banderas," (Three Flags) litografía, 1988, by Nuyorican artist Juan Sánchez (in the Printed Convictions/Convicciones Grabadas exhibit).

--the fábrica: factory:
--Made by mi tía: made by my aunt
--Made by una niña: made by a little girl
--Made in T.J.: made in Tijuana
--querida santita de la fábrica: dearest lady saint of the factory

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