BLINKEN IN BEIJING: DATA CALL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Antony Blinken was greeted by China’s top diplomat on Monday, and will perhaps meet its president, on the final day of a rare visit aimed at trying to resurrect relations between Washington and Beijing from historic lows. —The Guardian, June 18, 2023

Semiconductors
Formosa…Taiwan…
Uigur burial practices
Tesla
Ships passing in the South China Sea
Warships frigates destroyers
Balloon looking down on the American continent
SHOT
Spy station on the island of Cuba
Confucius Institutes everywhere
in the developing world
Plastics, christmas trees, clothes
A massive relationship, two 
superpowers yet distant neighbors  
coming together on climate 
change policies but staying apart 
on so many hot buttons 
including the rights of Man and Woman
Five and a half hours meeting
(extended by an hour)
American and Chinese teams
then strolling
before a working dinner for two hours
Foreign Minister and Secretary of State
Hard at work making   peace.
eating thousand-year-old eggs.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

AMAZON

by Donna Katzin

On Friday [April 1, Christian Smalls] won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. —The New York Times, April 2, 2022. Photo: Members of the new union celebrated in Brooklyn on Friday night. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/Associated Press

At the fulfillment center in Staten Island,      

every day a marathon, she logs 30 miles

in 12 hours on the warehouse floor,

wearing worn-out shoes she cannot afford to replace,

picking, packing boxes on dollies and hand trucks

before she clocks out.

Jeff Bezos, back from outer space,

could not finish one of her shifts.

 

Beneath fluorescent lights that never sleep,

during precious seconds between packages,

when her mind fights to focus,

she thinks of little ones

she left before breakfast,

not knowing whether she would

make it home to feed them dinner

or kiss them goodnight.

 

Computers track how fast she picks and packs

on the human conveyor belt,                               

evaluate her by algorithm,

feed back seconds per task,

pieces per minute, numbers to hit,           

speed up without notice or reason,

threaten to dismiss her                    

for missing her target rates.

 

Knees buckle, back rebels,                       

wrists and elbows numb, cramp.          

Stress takes its inner toll,   

presses veins and arteries,                                        

hangs heavy on her heart.

She reports to Amcare,                                  

is given an aspirin,                                           

sent back to the floor.                                       

 

But quietly, between shifts, 

as summer sweats and winter gnaws her weary bones,

she joins coworkers, shares indignities and injuries

by telephone and text, Twitter and Instagram,

in parking lots, food pantries and pews,

dares to tiptoe to a meeting,

whispers the word

union.

 

Donna Katzin is the founding and previous executive director of Shared Interest, a fund that mobilizes the human and financial resources of low-income communities of color in South and Southern Africa.  A board member of Community Change in the U.S., and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners working in Nicaragua, she has written extensively about South Africa, community development and impact investing.  Published in journals and sites including The New Verse News and The Mom Egg, she is the author of With the Hands, a book of poems and photographs about post-apartheid South Africa’s process of giving birth to itself.

POSTSCRIPT TO AN ACTIVIST'S LIFE

by David Chorlton

Unrest #1, a painting by Alyssa Liles-Amponsah

                nobody rich or famous…

                                Richard Shelton

 

The car in the driveway

has barely a pulse

and the windows don’t let in the light.

The palm trees no longer

aspire to the sky

and the garden hose hangs

on a hook.

Something’s eating the house from inside

say the neighbors,

no one answers the door when

they knock. The ceiling gave way

and a bucket of grief

stands under a hole where

time drips day

after day. The telephone’s hoarse

from repeating

I’m sorry I can’t speak now…,

the doorbell plays a dirge

and every minute makes

a tiny splash as it falls

into the unwashed dishes

in the kitchen sink.

 

He brought the border home with him,

unrolled it on the floor,

ran it through the kitchen to

the living room and cut

it into strips to hang instead of curtains

at the windows where a light

shone upon every nationality and exposed

the fault line between the rich

and poor. His trash bin

was filled with tailings from a mine

and every day he emptied it and

every next day it was full

again but he kept emptying. When the nails

fell out from where they held

the world together, he picked them up

to hammer back. Meetings.

Petitions. Meetings. Letters.

Meetings. Always somewhere to be,

to drive across town

on the sweating summer asphalt

with the windows down

to save money for gas.

 

Nobody knows for sure. It was

a mystery. The neighbors didn’t care much

for the man. He kept

largely to himself. Didn’t have a lot

to say. Kept going out, revving up

his car and coming back

then leaving again six

or eight times a day. The lady who lives across

from his house knows; she kept count.

Never really spoke

to him. And he spoke only

when spoken to. He was alone the last

few weeks. Come and go. Feed

the cats. People watched but didn’t know

what they were seeing. Didn’t

ask. Left him alone. And the weeds grew

like secrets in his yard

until one night the moon tipped

on its side, spilling

silver dust onto the moths around it

asking ancient questions

of the passionate light.

David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, who continues writing, painting, and keeping track of the local bird life. His newest book is Unmapped Worlds, a collection of rehabilitated poems from his files of the past.