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September 2015
Michael Gessner
mjcg3@aol.com

My early education, at the hands of Dominicans, informed me of all things possible and impossible right out of a few pages of Plato's Phaedo, set down over four-hundred years before their savior walked the earth.  As far as I may wander, I am pulled back to those few tenets:  the transitory nature of human existence, the necessity of denial, the tensions of extremes, the hope of the sublime.  I live in Tucson with my wife Jane Catherine, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish.  My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, and others.


F i e l d   W o r k 

UNICEF, and the ILO-IPEC estimate there are 168 million  child workers.  Of that number, 85 million work in hazardous or abusive jobs. About 250,000 are child soldiers.  [UN]
          
Brown Hand


These are my father’s hands.
They could not be browner
from the sun, from the long
days of picking and sorting.
Other kids pass by

and wave on their way to school.
What does a field need to be fed?
How much stooping, bone-ache,
bent spines, scarred skin would it
take to satisfy that hunger?

The field is endless.  It is always
hungry.  It will take everything
possible, and return only heat,
until every crop, my father’s hands
are dried up, consumed.





Green Hand
            

Pilots smile and nod.
The company gives me white
gloves made of cotton,
like the cotton in the fields.

I spot the rows that haven’t been
dusted.  I wave the white
flag and the plane comes in low
to make another pass.

I took my older brother’s job
when he couldn’t flag anymore.
The spray stains my gloves green.
My parents are proud.





Red Hand

            
My family is my squad.
We liberate.  That is our mission
always.  We take from the dead

what they don’t need:  jewelry,
cattle, food.  Never cry
on a raid.  Rifle and machete

are the tools of Justice. 
I know I am doing the work 
of God when my hand is red.
              
                 
Picture

©2015 Michael Gessner
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