The poem opens with a detailed description of the speaker's shirt. Some of these terms might be unfamiliar to anyone who's never sewn before:
- The "yoke" is the piece of fabric around the neck and shoulders. (Yokes are also wooden beams placed over the shoulders of an animal, usually a cow or ox, that allow them to pull a heavy load behind them. Because the poem explores the tragedies of labor and production, this double meaning—which implies the comparison between human workers and beasts of burden—becomes quite important.)
- "Yardage" refers to the amount of fabric needed to make the shirt.
- "Lapped seams" refers to a sewing technique in which one piece of fabric is laid over the edge of another to create a two-layer seam.
By listing out all these specific elements of the shirt, the speaker reveals that a lot goes into making even a seemingly simple item of clothing. The asyndeton here adds to the effect, making it sound as if the speaker is quickly scanning the shirt and examining the specific details of its construction, one by one:
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Without any conjunctions, it sounds like this list could go on and on. This, in turn, speaks to just how complex this shirt really is. (The poem will return to this technique over and over as the speaker explores both the shirt's appearance and its history.)
The fact that the "stitches along the collar" are "nearly invisible," meanwhile, speaks the skill of whoever made this shirt—and prompts the speaker to think about the workers behind this craft. The speaker can only guess who made the shirt: perhaps people in a "sweatshop" somewhere, "Koreans or Malaysians." The juxtaposition between the intricate beauty of the shirt and the "sweatshop" in which it was made hints at the poem's broader point: that people often overlook or don't care about the human cost behind their material comforts.
This stanza is a tercet, meaning it's made up of three lines. The poem will use this form throughout, and the strict stanza structure results in frequent enjambments. That is, the speaker often breaks up thoughts right in the middle of a clause in order to stick to the three-line form, as readers can see in the final two lines of this opening stanza:
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping [...]
All this enjambment will make the stanzas feel intertwined and connected, in turn evoking the connections between each element of a single shirt.