In this world of hierarchies,
I guess we all need something beneath us.
– Jonathan Mooney, The Short Bus

almost american
.
you can’t coax an orange to grow
the way you can a migrant worker to
climb two stories into a tree of
thorns, atop a ladder nestled in
insecurity. you can also convince
him to stay up there until he picks
a nearest full ninety-nine-
pound sack, and then you can press him
into repeating himself sixty, seventy,
or eighty times – depending
on the fairness of
sky – and by nightfall
you can stuff forty-nine
dollars into his pocket and one
juicy orange into each of ours
.
20080208:1212
y

john bowe excerpt