Modern Slavery

The Face of Modern Slavery

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/opinion/kristof-the-face-of-modern-slavery.html?_r=1&hp

Sold at six.

Arms and legs tied to the bed.

Sold night after night.

Sewn up,

Sold as a virgin again.

And again.

Finally free

Though other girls remain.

When will we save them from the nightmare? 

Bridal Slave

Bridal Slave
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/2011/10/2011101013102368710.html


Henna will not decorate slender fingers
Gold necklaces will not drape her neck
No diamond will stud her nostril
She will have no embroidered sari
He will not feed her sweets from loving fingers
Neighbors will not bless and celebrate


$120
For a bride like a mule
Who will labor in burning sun by day
And be used by him each night

Gather

As the Police Moved In, the Word Went Out: ‘It’s Happening’

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/zuccotti-park-protesters-its-happening.html?_r=1

Strangely quiet now

Wordless after destruction

Like an abandoned village

Without a hut left standing

Protestors, tents, tarps,

Gas masks and goggles,

Drums and American flags

All ripped away

Zuccotti  Park hosed down

Stripped clean.

Nerve center crippled

Yet still we gather

Green

Your Prius' Deepest Darkest Secret

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/10/rare-earths-prius-molycorp?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motherjones%2FTheBlueMarble+%28Mother+Jones+%7C+The+Blue+Marble%29

Young workers in Inner Mongolia

Hair, a shocking white,

Teeth, falling out one by one,

Youth reduced to radioactive waste

For rare earth mining

To gather  Neodymium

That fuels your Prius

And runs your wind turbines

We will clear dense forests in Malaysia

Soon defects will mar village babies

Women will fear water in the rivers

You, however, will drive your Smart car, 

Play with your toys,

Congratulating yourself for treading gently

On a poisoned planet

Preparing for the Games

In Pictures: Brazil police seize Rio's largest favela

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15711132

100,000 crammed in candy colored apartments,

Paint fading in Brazilian sun.

Drug runners abandon their corners

As winding streets are overtaken by tanks.

Soldiers bear rifles

Besides mountains of trash.

Let the games begin.

My Parents Were Home-Schooling Anarchists

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/magazine/my-parents-were-home-schooling-anarchists.html?pagewanted=6&hpw

Mom and Dad  embraced “all things counter, original, spare, strange.” 

Wandering in Mexico with us, 4 young children

Visiting mummies in Guanjuato

And ruins of a castle in England

Tramping across continents

Afternoons spent doing Yoga and drinking tea

When finally forced to attend prison-like school

In Saint Louis,

Having no jeans, no feathered hair,

Unable to recite Star Wars lines or multiplications tables

We learned to sit in rows,

To defend ourselves,

To disappear  

What Remains

Dover mortuary landfill dumping: Congressman asked Pentagon about practice in Sept.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-warned-about-landfill-issue-months-ago/2011/11/11/gIQAdLWbCN_story.html?hpid=z4

After the folded flags

And the solemn bugler playing taps

Far away from the endless white crosses of Arlington

Soldiers remains

Molder in a landfill

Thank you for your service.

May God bless America.

“Success with Honor”

Penn State’s Motto 

http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/uploadedFiles/Press/Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf

My obituary is being written

Though I’m still alive

Year upon year of sunlight and green fields,

Cheering crowds, beautiful passes,

Tainted by inaction.

I knew about Sandusky and the Second Mile

All of those troubled boys

Victim 1,

11 or 12 years old

Sandusky brought him to church

The kid slept in his basement

Coach claimed to be working on wrestling moves

He had 61 phone calls on log to the boy

Not one returned

Victim 2

Just ten years old,

Caught in the showers with him at 10:00 pm by some teaching assistant,

Who heard water, slapping, and crying…

He told us; we did nothing

Victim 3

In the seventh grade,

Wore gym shorts to bed ,

Lay on his belly, trying to prevent it

Victim 4

Just a kid

Given Nike, Air walk,

Trips to games around the country,

In exchange for his childhood

He hid in the closet when the coach came calling

Victim 5

7 years old

Trapped in the shower

Not understanding why he couldn’t feel clean

Victim 6’s

Mother noticed his wet hair,

She reported the incident to police

And confronted Sandusky

Who said, “I wish I were dead”

Victim 7

Haunted by blurry memories,

Phone calls not returned

Victim 8

Witnessed by a janitor

Who sobbed at what he saw. 

Veteran of war and sorrow,

Shocked by a middle aged man’s mouth on a young boy

Incident never reported

Janitor now suffers from dementia

I wish I too could forget,

That memory would blur

And curl at the edges like paper warped by water,

But when my moment came,

Words perished on my tongue

Now I too feel trapped in the showers
Stifled by steam
Praying for new baptism 

Life Begins

Mississippi Voters Reject 'Personhood' Measure

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/09/142164176/personhood-amendment-rejected-by-miss-voters?ft=1&f=1014&sc=tw

I remember marching on the campus green

Armed with a bent wire hanger, chanting “never again”,

Feeling as if my adult life began with protest

Friends confessed the procedure

Tears streaming down youthful faces,

Not ready to be mothers

Yet I’ve seen when life truly begins

Tiny cluster of cells singing under the microscope

I’ve wept  for their death,

Prayed for their growth,

Envisioned their endless multiplication

Unraveled

The strange and curious history of lobotomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15629160

Men in stark white lab coats

Severed connections from the frontal lobe 

Arms deep in neural swamp

Casting about for cures

Thousands of people

With unstitched minds,

Faulty connections unwoven like an unraveling shawl

Legions of mindless,

Soon to be apathetic, catatonic,

Among their last words, “Thank you doctor”.

Stain

Reports Detail the Chase for Freed Exotic Animals

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/us/reports-detail-chase-for-freed-exotic-animals-in-ohio.html?src=recg

Debt ridden

Divorced

I set my animals free,

Liberated to run through ravines and prairie

Little did I know

Before my suicide

50 would be murdered,

Poached, shot dead for their father’s sins

I took my own life

After opening the cages.

Never expecting the white tiger

To gnaw on my bones

African tigers.

Mountain lions.

Grizzly bears.

All slaughtered.

Their blood will stain my name.

Blue

Doctor Trials Laser Treatment to Change Eye Colour 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15596885

Iris the

Color of deer fur;

Fresh chestnuts;

Moist soil

Flooded with piercing light

(Stare directly into the laser,

As if it were an eclipse)

Until brown bleeds to tan then explodes

Like turquoise fireworks.

Blue as deep water;

Indian summer sky;

Robin’s exquisite eggs

Who would dare

Stare into the sun,

Trade earth for ocean,

Force brown eyes blue?

Guatemala Trash 'Miners'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/04/guatemala-trash-miners_n_1076938.html?ref=world#s455103

Standing atop a mountain of refuse

Swollen trash floating in a filthy river

Panning for gold

Board of Trade

CHICAGO TRADER DUMPS MCDONALD’S APPLICATIONS ON THE 99 PERCENT

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/04/360500/chicago-trader-dumps-mcdonalds-applications-on-the-99-percent/

Blanket cold protestors

With sheets of job applications for McDonalds

They deserve no more

Their lives meaningless as flyers whipping in the wind

Proudly post signs in my high rise window

“I am the 1%”

Caffeine. commute. Work twelve hours. Commute. Ambien. Repeat.

I have no time for chanting and philosophy.

Claw from your gutter, or stay where you belong.

Begin Again

Purging Cells in Mice Is Found to Combat Aging Ills

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/science/senescent-cells-hasten-aging-but-can-be-purged-mouse-study-suggests.html?_r=1&hpw

Finally

Brows unfurrow as if time is a film playing backwards,

An old grainy color reel

Of your mother  as a girl,

Gamboling along a nameless beach

Finally

Cloudy eyes grow clear,

As in a polluted river,

Murky pools dissipate, and crystal water flows unencumbered

Finally

Gray hair to sable

As if in a dream,

Where you are always twenty-one

(Age is suspended in the mind’s timeless eye)

Forever beautiful, your life, always beginning.

Failed Prophet Regrets Wrongly Predicting All Those Raptures

http://gawker.com/5855133/

Words warp into riddles

Seek truth through careful divination

God swims beneath the surface,

Haunting, elusive

Humble followers squandered modest fortunes

Following my failed prophesies

I sit in the dead stillness of night

Ear pressed to Holiest Book

Listening for Him

Fall Back

Daylight Saving Time 2011: Why and When Does It Begin?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/110311-daylight-savings-2011-time-savings-when-does-spring-forward-nation/

Fall pries back the numerals

Of the ancient clock,

Gnarled knuckles wrestling away minutes

Until withered hands become smooth

Autumn whispers with fallen leaves, crackling under foot

Spring riots with toddlers in brightly colored costume

One stolen hour of sunlight

Will help harvest the corn

And fill the silo for winter,

Who meanders on soft white paws,

Blanketing creation in frosty silence

Unknown Hands

All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/garden/all-that-authenticity-may-be-getting-old.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hpw

Bird silhouette perches on spare branch

Jute grain sacks and fading maps adorn walls

Hand knit blankets in roughly hewn wool

Folded inside armoire built with salvaged timber

Surround ourselves with the work of unknown hands,

Totems for authentic lives  

Sold

Jailed Occupy Chicago Protesters Describe Harsh Treatment By Police, Plan To Picket Rahm Emanuel's Office http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/jailed-occupy-chicago-pro_n_1028081.html#s427949&title=We_care_about

Youth, bearing protest signs,

Your reward will be metal cages.

Rubber bullets.

Tear gas.

Stolen hope.

Democracy,

That veiled virgin,

Whored to the highest bidder.

Longing for Home

Native Survivors Of Foster Care Return Home

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/27/141728431/native-survivors-of-foster-care-return-home?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I.

Eight year old boy

Living in a teepee

On the Western Plains

Shiny white van emerges

Whisks away the child for “summer camp”

He spends twelve years with white strangers

Surrounded by four white walls

Dreaming of sage and tobacco

Hearing Grandfather’s Voice

“Never forget who you are”

Still waiting for the van to return

Infant From Rubble

Turkey Earthquake 2011: Three More People Pulled From Rubble

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/turkey-earthquake-2011-rescue_n_1032222.html#s431136

Earth covered in ashes

A painting in shades of gray

Yet you emerged

Pink and sobbing,

From under bricks and wreckage

As if the Earth itself birthed you

Infant pulled from rubble

Braving Chaos, Parents and Kids Occupy Wall Street for a Night

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/parents-kids-occupy-wall-street-dan-zanes?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motherjones%2Fmain+%28MotherJones.com+Main+Article+Feed%29

Toddlers cordoned off

Devouring cupcakes covered with icing

Playing with pastel letters on playskoolc mats

 Zucotti Park rages around them

Fire trucks blaring, protesters chanting

Children with pint sized backpacks

 Dorac and Elmoc  covered over by political slogans

A lone baby cries, demanding to be heard

Nakushi

The Indian girls called 'Unwanted': Children branded by their families chose new names for fresh start
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052606/From-undesirable-Goddess-Hundreds-Indian-girls-translates-Unwanted-chose-new-monikers-fresh-start.html#ixzz1bhRWCxjX

Nakushi

My name is no longer “Unwanted”

Call me Aahna, because I exist

Call me Bahumathi, I will be a scholar

Call me Dakshakanya, able daughter

Call me Ibha, for I am all hope

My name is no longer “Unwanted”

Nakushi

Wingspan

Brooklyn mother dies shielding schoolchildren from gunfire

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/brooklyn-mother-killed-while-shielding-children-from-bullets-near-school.html

She spent her whole life

With arms open wide,

Her wingspan generous enough to cover

The children

As the bullets rained from rooftop.

Rag Picker

Chinese toddler left for dead in hit-and-run crash dies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15398332

Perhaps death is a blessing

For a child

Mowed down by a van

Her little form driven over like a small pile of refuse,

Only to be driven over again.

Eighteen people walked by her bleeding body,

Averting their eyes,

Before a rag picker carried her away.

Perhaps death is a blessing

For this child.

Halloween with Penelope

These are the days of kitty cat purrs and princess gowns

Of petting goats,

Painting pumpkins,

and greeting flowers by name

These are days of bare feet in sandboxes,

Paper bags worn jauntily atop your little head,

And saying goodnight to beautiful bugs, tall trees, and star bright stars.

You long to play in the clouds,

To pet ducks and geese,
To see dinosaurs,

To pull fistfuls of basil and put rocks in the bird feeder

To stay a little girl and not grow bigger,

May you always dance with your Dad,

Find comfort in your mama's words,

Know the peace of the summer sun 

And greet the flowers by their name

Escape

Exotic animals escape Ohio farm; owner found dead

 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ohio-exotic-animal-escape-20111019,0,2040741.story

Perhaps you gave yourself a tranquilizer

Opened the doors to their cages,

Deactivated the electric fence

Before sailing on oblivion’s ocean

Or perhaps you were strangled by strong paws

Who stole your keys

And set free the bears

No matter.

Exotic animals prowl the interstate

Lions running the roadways

Giraffes eating leaves in the medians

Camels  at the convenient store

Wolves at the Walmart

Humans hide at home

Cowering behind closed curtains.

The Nameless

Freed Soldier Gilad Shalit Returns To Israel

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/18/141452716/freed-soldier-gilad-shalit-returns-to-israel

1,000 stories silenced

From unknown men

With unspoken names

Nameless women will shed countless tears

For returning husbands and brothers

With untold tales

The only name uttered is Gilad Shalit

One life worth 1,000

What strange calculus

Privileges 1 to 1000?

What curious math 

Sentences so many lives to abstraction?

Not Sybil

A Girl Not Named Sybil

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/a-girl-not-named-sybil.html?pagewanted=3&src=recg&adxnnlx=1318852883-/AjM2pCOLKRt0gmrJY8Cpw

She claimed she awoke in antique shops

Surrounded by shattered china dolls

Or in foreign hotels in far flung cities

Quiet woman transformed into pigtailed girl;

And arrogant student;

Frightened loner;

Chatty rule breaker.

You believed it all,

Crawling into bed with your patient

To administer electric shock

Feeding her sodium pentothal , barbiturates

Tape recording endless sessions

Where she spoke of Mother

(and the flashlight inside her, blanket over her eyes, cotton stuffed in her nostrils; silver boxes and glass bottles, arms and legs held down)

The only doubt you had...

When she confessed so many lies...

Homecoming, 20th Reunion

Manicured hands will be shaken

Expanding waistlines carefully obscured

Doubts, like sharp bursts of pain,

Will be smoothed over with a bleached smile

Stay a while

You will remember the feel of catching a football,

When the wind used to sing your name

Every audience gave a standing ovation

And came bearing roses

Sitting on the back of your daddy’s convertible

Arms around a girl wearing a rhinestone tiara 

You wished all of life would be a sunny morning

At a hometown parade

99%

Occupy Wall Street Inspires Worldwide Protests

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/15/141382468/occupy-wall-street-inspires-worldwide-protests?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

“We are unstoppable.  Another world is possible”

We are chanting on Wall Street,

Marching in DC,

Bearing signs that say “There is enough for everyone,”

and “Give us our 92.7 billion back”.

We are in

Toronto, London, Sydney, Singapore

951 Cities

82 Countries

We are the 99%

Scene from Dream

Lifting little glasses of wine in unison

We sing blessings in Hebrew and Arabic

I sit with survivor of the Shoah, a poet with covered head,

We eat with our fingers

Steaming pita, creamy hummus, rich falafel

And drink sweet red wine

We walk through my city,

But not my city,

To an unknown  river

The poet dives in,

Swimming like a porpoise

I wade slowly into icy water

Surrounded by young Yeshivah students in black suits,

Their swimming, a frigid prayer

Modern Day Slavery

Alabama brings back slavery for Latinos

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/12/alabama-slavery-latino-immigrants


Water shut off
Children chased from schools
Fields of cotton lie unpicked
Attempts to flee Alabama failed


Now jailed on immigration charges
Sent as a prisoner to pick your cotton
Modern day slavery