Brillo pads get rid of most of the dirt on your hands.
And Lever soap. Forget Ivory or Olay. Hand cream
covers the smell of hot dust, of metal. Try Country Apple
or Passionate Peach. Some girls like the smell of lavender.

Wear red polish. Color hides dark stains and dirt,
especially grime that gets pushed back where hard nail
meets soft skin, that place a metal file can’t find.

Wear light foundation. Water-based. It keeps your pores
free from dirt. But don’t bother with loose powder.
The dust in the air will take care of the shine.

Forget eyeliner. It will stain the shadows beneath your eyes.
Forget mascara. It will run. Even the waterproof kind.
And don’t wear lipstick. Ever. Chapstick will do.

Vaseline is even better. But Cover Girl, Revlon, even Almay
sucks all moisture from your lips, making your smile,
like the rest of you, crack.

Rumors on the floor say she’s here
because of her connections. But the truth
is much simpler: the money may be good,
the work may be easy, but no one wants
second shift in August, so she got the job.
In charge of two furnaces, she loads pieces
off long carts, feeling summer freckles slide
from her face, and her skin grow tight
around her cheeks, her chin, even her ribs.
In the heat of hot grills, she discovers
it is easy to daydream, to think the smile
on the maintenance man is real, but
the knotted hands of all the press operators
will disappear when they push through
their coat sleeves at quitting time.
When Lewis Hine appears, box camera in hand,
she doesn’t blink. Never remembering
those pictures buried in her history textbooks,
photos of little girls stitching artificial flowers
in tenement houses, or young women
mending cotton threads in mills thick with fine dust
and lint, she poses, thinking of his words —
I only take pictures of beautiful children.
It’s still summer. She’s 18, but looks 14.
She only wants to be beautiful.