How to suck blood from this blood-sucked
image? A garment worker’s needle is suturing
the scene: she sews a thousand polyester hearts
while her Singer croons, a schoolgirl breasts
the clock-less walls, Dhaka’s illit-
erate mothers thread an English
logo, and a factory soldier stalks the aisles —
Extendo lolling at his hip.
Nights ago, the garment worker drowned
her newborn in the toilet: half-submerged
in bloody water it groped the umbilical cord
like a rescue rope. The mother snipped the line
with fabric scissors, standing on the red mirror,
whispering: all survival poems are washed in blood.
