They are the brave ones,
fighting
with scissors as swords,
blood-pricked looms as shields.

They ride conveyor-belt horses,
majestic steeds of burnished
steel and fiberglass,
upon which many of their fellow warriors
have fallen under weight of CEO's steel vice
and succumbed to the occasional faulty screw
and "accidental" crushed Union limb.

but all is fair in war
and peace is paid to the family
in one day worker's compensation,
and at least the generosity
is respectfully doled out
to have the broken bones
of twelve-year-old girls
returned, corpses
wrapped up in the healing bandages
of a copy of the New York Times:
MYSTERY: MAQUILA GIRLS RAPED, MURDERED AND DUMPED IN RIVER
and i can't help but color it ironic
that the readers and editors have to ask themselves
"who did this?" and gasp
"who could have done such a horrible thing?"
because the hand that rocks the cradle
is not always the one that gives the most
poisonous milk. watch as they then economically toss the paper
in the recycling bin
and pat themselves on the backs
for being such concerned citizens
and for reading such a liberal newspaper
and for being able to murder without even
touching with sterile american hands.

But still the women ride out at dawn,
to foreign cities with strange names,
hearing the call of glory
bullhorned from rickety buses
trumpeting the jarring cacophonous sound:the false lure of a sweet
jingle
of money,
meaning food and not hard rice
for a hard tongue in this hard world.

They do not come back,
at least not the same young women
who courageously braved red sandstorms
to bring home the family jewels,
no they do not come back war heroes,
no they never ride the homecoming parade float
wearing the coveted Girl-of-the-Week crown
or even stumble back on foot at all,

except with tear jewels pricking their eyes,
with the blood of the holy crusades,
of soft young moor finger against christian
textile and needle
and rubber sole canvas,
of soft young finger melting to reveal
the hard wizened one beneath,
of soft young finger breaking,
bone falling, mildew fleshing, torture calling
as the finger falls into the vat of human
kindness,
and they wear no rings on them, no weddings, no guccipradalancomearmaninikegapoldnavybananarepublic,
only
the symbol of war,
the mark that the devil has been there,
the burnt flesh a warning against thinking anarchy
against a senseless system--
yes for each of your childhood scrapes
these women have a symposium of scars
from egyptian whips & coarse pyramid stones,

and although in my university we study
the evils of stalin's work camps,
we study wearing the fruits of his descendants'
enforced labor,
the proud emblems of sweatshops and expensive clothes
made by those the world economy has kindly
patronized, its cheap whores:
the women of the world...
if she is a strong woman then push her down
keep her suppressed don't let her think she's too strong
if she is a weak, tired woman they do not care,
If she cannot lift brick or stone even once then
let her lift a needle a million times
and bleed a million drops

bleed a million drops
into concentric circles of sea in which we'll drown
until we hit ocean floor and then dream,
in our nightmare,
that they crouch down at night,
praying to an American flag
that I cannot wear for shame of it
and if we listen to the whisper
real close we will hear them pray:
"Will America and its women, no Angels of
Mercy,
see me from their skyscrapers, business suits
and high heels that have shattered glass ceilings
but still rain shards on my face?
Can the American woman see me crouching under
the low ceiling that bridges this factory to hell?
Will she join my ranks in this war that rages
every night and day in our so-called peacetime
and will we fight as WOMEN, as HUMANS,
the enemy who treads so invisibly
who sends
shudders up my spine
and teardrops down my lids
and lashes cross my back?"
Will you give her silence,
or a voice heard round the world?
The smoke and ashes clear from each dewy
morning and we can see across the Pacific, the
Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico:
we see, but we sew our eyelids shut
__and though they try to rip the seams__

some utensils cut the flesh
but not the mind.

By first light of morning,
your daughter plays with a freshly scented
morning glory and places it behind the ear of
her designer doll,
but Latin America and Asia's daughters make
them at first light
and morning's only glory is that the little
girl gets to spend time fighting the battle
to survive with her mother, who sews next to her,

while you drop your daughter
at the pre-school in upper east side manhattan
that costs 5,000 a year and you had to meet the
right people to get her into, and boy didn't you think
THAT was a pain, and aren't you just TIRED.

Still sleep does not equal peace,
and tonight you may dream
that the Demon of Trade
has taken their purple hearts
and peddled their wares
to the Angels of Mercy
who shop Fifth Avenue America,
and oh my darling,
i AM
so sorry to say
but in America,
dreams really DO come true.

But not for those outside this treasured land
of manifest massacre
so why must we wait until the newspapers
declare the horrors, why can we not
see the everyday pains?
The girl forced to take her work home
and finish sewing that night or
she will be fired, already abused every day,
the one with no home who sleeps with
only the night as her cloak,
she who receives one-thousandth
of what you will pay,
let us hear their daily declarations
in our nightmares until we awaken
from our deep sleep with a sweat on our brow
and a new consciousness in our minds.