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Contests : Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2008 : High Distinction
FROM L.A. TO NEW YORK,
CADIZ, MARSEILLES,
FRANKFURT, LONDON...
you see them
on buses
heads bobbing
with fatigue
as they ride
one hour or more
each way
to jobs
in garment shops
in electronics factories
in meatpacking plants
in old people's homes
in construction cleanup
mopping hospital rooms
making hospital beds
as domestic servants
as busboys
as dishwashers
as fast food cooks and waiters
as fishermen and janitors
sometimes they work a twelve-hour day
then they return
on buses
heads bobbing
with fatigue
as they ride
one hour or more
each way
to the ghettos where they live
in apartments
with leaky pipes
radiators not working in winter
plumbing not worth the metal
cracked windows
creaking floors
cockroaches
rats
from jobs
people
say
they are robbing
from citizens
say
they don't pay enough taxes
for all the services they use
say
they come in invade
cross borders illegally
cause the economy
to be the way it is
say
everything that's going wrong
well it's all their fault
you see them
on buses
heads bobbing
with fatigue
as they ride
one hour or more
each way
far from home
from some foreign place
where they left loved ones
to look for
jobs at minimum wage
jobs no one wants
jobs that barely pay
the rent
if you live
with
just one wage earner
dirty jobs
without prestige
dangerous jobs
without a future
they're stealing them all
you see them
on buses
heads bobbing
with fatigue
as they ride
one hour or more
each way
mexicans and el salvadoreans in los angeles
dominicans and haitians in new york
moroccans in cadiz
west africans in marseilles
turks in frankfurt
west indians in london
chinese, pakistanis, guatemalans, filipinos, vietnamese,
hondurans, thais
persons displaced by
colonialism
or
imperialism
or
wars
and
struggles
civil or otherwise
you see them
on buses...
This poem won a High Distinction award in the 2008 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Tamar Diana Wilson received a $200 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Tamar Diana Wilson
Tamar Diana Wilson has published poems and/or short stories in Struggle,
Thema, Blue Mesa Review, Saturday Afternoon Journal, and Anthropology & Humanism,
and in a volume edited by Terry Wolverton. Her collection of one poem and six
short stories, entitled Tales from Colonia Popular, will be published in
2009 by Plain View Press. She is primarily an anthropologist and lives in Los
Cabos, Mexico. An earlier version of this poem appeared in Struggle, 1993, Vol.9, No.2, pp. 2-4.
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