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Laborer's Ode Ii - Bottled-Up Future
In his mid-30s but still a boy
Given $14.50 an hour and 12 hour shifts
Six days a week
His driver’s license confiscated
For five slung beers over a night long ago
Cost him $10,000
Contributed to the system
Of judges bailiffs lawyers and Presidents
All residents
Of the lakes and new mansions up north on weekends
Five years it will take him
To pay them for his sin.
Out here on the way to work
There are no buses
So the boy joins a line of third world refugees
Walking an hour and a half a day
Each way
Through the sweat of summer
And the snow of winter
From Greatdale Apartments
To the soda pop company’s bottling plant
He limps down the shoulder of King’s Road
Texting a screen scream to his desperate dad
“I can’t do this anymore!”
This
The only demand the son can manage
While Escalades
Roar by him
Side mirrors whisking within inches of his elbows
The thought of the American Dream
Or even the idea of a violent union revolution
Pouring out of him
Like his 10 cent returns
After work at the Party Store.
Copyright ©
Robert Trezise Jr.
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