FALL/ WINTER 2012

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Ed Stever

THIS AIN’T A RANT 

It’s about us.
What we buy.
When we point our fingers
at Wall Street,
at big corporations,
while fingering our
i-Phones, our Kindle Fires,
logging on to social media,
deciding how to gather at
Zuccoti Park.
 
What are we thinking
of the children in China,
in their single digits,
part of the chain
that connects them to their
desks, their work stations,
to keep us connected,
about the countries
we have “fair trade”
agreements with,
but who employ children
to work in fields all day?
 
Or are we thinking
about our computers,
our PCs, our Macs,
our Skypes, our Vonages,
our laptop cameras,
everyone masturbating,
or those who can afford to,
for the folks in Germany,
Holland, Paris, Dublin
London, Barthelona,
pan-global onanism,
whether you touch yourself or not.
 
Why not buy a boy in Thailand,
a woman in Nepal,
beat them, abuse them,
buy some illicit drugs
from a local dealer,
in any part of the world,
contribute to the global
drug economy, weed from Mexico,
junk from Afghanistan?
 
When the United Nations
Drug and Crime Tsar
claims that illegal
drugs saved the banking
industry from collapse in 2009,
because it was the only liquid capital
they could lay hands on,
we have pause to ponder…
 
Are we thinking about
young adults in China,
slaving in the factories
that manufacture our
electronic toys,
locked in their dormitories,
like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire?
 
But there have been advances,
advances in the netting
they string around the dorms
and the factories,
where the employees leap
from the roofs of the buildings,
their only escape--
no fires,
only flight.
 
Yes.
 
What are we thinking?
 
What-are-we-thinking?


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