Pegasus2000

Cries for Help
Matthew Manning
First Place, Poetry
Fitzgerald High School

No peace when piece-rates
Will buy her nothing to eat
She’s sewing the sleeves
That bring 3 cents each.
She chokes on the vapors,
The papers
Lie just beyond her reach.
Swimming upstream
The curse of a dream; like Alice
She hears the Red Queen,
“Run as fast as you can
To stay right where you are.”
She’s been running for months
Hasn’t moved very far,
Maquiladoras or New York City,
The same scene,
Different actors,
Hearts without pity.

Maria’s pre-teen sweat
Falling into the GAP.
SNAP!
SNAP!
A baseball cap
Sewn with tiny, blistered fingers,
Caught in a death trap.

He wears a swoosh for 60 seconds;
She toils for 10 years,
He’s making big bucks;
She’s living in fear.
I wanna be like Mike,
And that image he is carving.
But “Just Do It!®”
Doesn’t cut it
When your children are starving.
A day’s work for a bowl of rice.

Their tired, sunken eyes.
The screaming.
The beatings.
The piles of lies.

But you don’t listen,
‘Cause your new shoes are fly.
And tired little Mohnan
Shudders and dies.
The pop-culture screaming,
”Americanize!”
So we look through the glass
With our American eyes.

Don’t let their screams
Fall on deaf ears.