Tag Archives: illegal immigrants

Illegals Need Not Apply

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Illegals Need Not Apply

We’ve established a mandate to clean up our town—
evict all the illegals, tear their shacks down.
Any esculent foodstuff we find in their digs,
we’ll put in a trough and feed to the pigs,
but our lawyer has issued strong words of advisement
that we must buy a one-week advertisement

telling them where they can pick up their things
before they take off to spread out their wings
to head out for another gullible city
so naive, as we once were, that they will take pity
on these ignorant folks with no backing or dough
who claim that they all have no place to go.

If they’d displayed gumption and shown their compliance
by earning our favor and conquered reliance
(we suspect) on whiskey or illegal drugs,
become steadfast citizens, not (alleged) thugs,
things might have been different, the outcome more pleasant,
but as it is, affairs at the present

have favored their ouster. The townfolks’ conviction
is that they warrant immediate eviction.
We’re God-fearing folks here. We know one-and-all
that when God sees the smallest of sparrows to fall,
he doesn’t mean illegal immigrants or
any of the other indigent poor

who come from the south or the east or the west
trying to find out the place that is best.
What of the jobs that they took cleaning houses,
picking our fruit, ironing our blouses,
cooking our hamburgers, watching our kids,
tending our gardens and getting rid

of our garbage? I’m pretty sure we can find
others to fill them of our own kind.
What college graduate or spoiled kid
of indulgent parents would not want to bid
on a menial job at minimum wage?
I’m sure our “want” ads will be all the rage.

Prompt words today are esculent (fit to be eaten), advertisement, mandate, gumption, reliance and outcome.

Unclear Agenda

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This poem is set in California, U.S.A. and the initial character is American, as are the protesters. The men standing outside the lumber yard are Mexicans looking for work. 

Unclear Agenda

His denims worn and torn, his hair unshorn,
he sat on a fruit crate near a stop sign
on an exit road just off the California interstate.
“Will work for food,” his sign said, so I stopped.
“Jump in,” I said, and he looked confused.
“I have a city lot taken over by castor beans,” I told him.
“I’ll give you a meal and ten bucks an hour to clear them.”
“Lady, that would take me a day or more,” he said.
“I can make more than that in a few hours, just sitting here.”

A week later I see him in a line of toughs
who line the street, holding signs and now and then
crossing the street to harass the Mexican laborers
in the parking lot outside the lumberyard.
“Illegals steal the  jobs of good Americans,” their placards say,
while the littler, more brawny men stand silent,
not answering their jostlings and their shouts.
Once more, I pull up in front of him.
“So you’re ready to work?” I ask. “Jump in.”

I direct the question to the lot, and not one answers.
“So no one wants the job of cutting castor beans?” I ask.
This sparks a recognition, and he shifts and turns,
his attention suddenly captured by the man lighting a joint
behind, in the shadows of a shrub.
Still, not one answers, so I drive on to the parking lot.
When I ask the question again, thirteen hands shoot up.
I leave with a full back seat and when I turn into the street
not one picket sign is lifted. Every eye avoids my own.

This poem, based on a real incident, was inspired by the prompt, “Wandering Revenue” that was suggested to me by the Topic Generator. https://topicgenerator.wordpress.com/submit/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-ritual/