Arrogantly you stand in the corner

of an obliquely lit dining room.

Never needing sunshine for your

emerald radicals bereft of chloroplasts.

Your plastic roots won’t touch earth

or drink from the water’s edge.

Not a phenomenon from God

or Mother Earth. Yet

you seem alive, much like

the hottest mannequins

attending any dinner party.

An orbiculate adorned

in jade, a twiggy arm juts

slightly right, out of place.

So easy to rearrange.

We’re both beautiful

but I’m alive, breathing, animated.

Your artificial trunk sits in

a vessel of twisted bamboo.

You and your urn, imported

created by the calloused fingers

of children. From an island

which i can’t pronounce.

You reek of slavery, without essence.

A decorative graveyard of souls

I gaze at you, your hideous

superficiality and I can hear.

Unspoken secrets, notice the tears of

children with hardened hands.

Mass producing a reality in

sweltering assemblies, another

fruitless icon of malnutrition.

Does it not make you care?

Who are these people anyway?

The ones dining in polite veneer and

those working for a cup of rice,

both starving.

What is wrong with this picture?

Does it define who I am or you?


©Janet Caldwell 2001- 2009