i. The shape up
If to eat you unloaded ships:
the shape up. Dawn
line up at the docks,
whatever the foreman
felt like, who moved loads
fastest, paid him off, made
least trouble. In any year
the longshoremen by themselves
if they said no, were nothing.
But the teamsters, it was 1934—
ii. For instance
Shelby, Fall River, piecers
& dyers, Trion. & sewers,
Augusta, for instance.
Running rundown pickups
mill to milltown, flying their giant
strike across states. Honea Path
for instance, sheriff & guard
gunfire, Woonsocket,
a lot like war, imagine
when people can’t be pushed
any farther. Akron
Ohio, they threw the big switches,
Goodyear, sat down
at their boilers splicing drums
Firestone they sat down—
iii. The teamsters
Saying no more shape up
San Francisco’s longshoremen
would be nothing to knock back down,
in 1934 there were so many
so hungry, everywhere. But the teamsters
called mass meetings, yelled down
decades of Mike Casey.
Who in our towers of one
& zero can picture it?
Done with the shape up,
let us run our own hiring hall,
& they struck. Billy club,
tear gas police came to break
their line but the teamsters,
in my lifetime a word
like someone’s bones in cement,
teamsters refused to haul
what strikebreakers unloaded.
Peach crates rotting,
reams of denim, imagine—
iv. Bloody Thursday
Bay lapping stilled hulls. From
their ships walked the sailors,
cooks, stewards, marine firemen.
Through lumber for hundreds of miles
saw blades not spinning. Flies
swarming apricots, millions
of eggs caught in Petaluma, I try
to imagine, coffee beans
weighed how many tons of dark
in their sacks. Worry percolated
through Piedmont, from Los Altos
grand homes, phone calls.
The Embarcadero armor-car’d,
barbwired. The port
would be forced open, tear gas
riot gun on brick
or two-by-four. Thursday
police shot two—
v. Market Street
Where in our days windows,
windows never stop glowing,
two caskets were borne
by they say forty thousand
down Market Street. Can I
imagine the teamsters, sailors
joined the line, then butchers
left the slaughterhouse,
streetcar drivers, the cleaners
dyers, pressers, boilermakers walked
out of 60 shops. Bartenders, waiters,
cooks put on their one good suit
& strolled where they lived,
welding torch, jackhammer
toolboxed, taxis parked.
Grocery doors “closed until
the boys win,” wet piles
of hotel towels, movie popcorn
kerneled & cold, nightclub
lights out. Four days in July
from clocktower to Lotta’s fountain
pigeons clicked lines in the quiet—