thousands of pounds of fast fashion sweatshop clothing being poured
into the chile desert.
and my mother cries because venezuela won’t let
her come back home.
won’t let her feet touch the beaches she
grew up in. won’t let her
eat the fruit born from the fruit
whose seeds she spat onto the ground.
no bus to school. walked miles in the scorching heat.
water hanging off of her like a terrible blanket.
the lightning storms and the jellyfish that killed
kids she knew. the horse that
killed my cousin, unintentionally.
head banging on the ground.
the balloon a child choked on.
the guns the government uses and the tv programs
you have to watch if you can’t get netflix
from the black market. the vlogs
of the grocery stores stocked full,
european-style and expensive and marked in US dollars
and full of people who label their videos with
“tour of the richest city in venezuela!”
my mother watching it from below denver, colorado.
vamos a ver algo, she says, and we watch
this perfect man speak to us about what i should have
seen for myself as a child. he has to pay his bills.
everyone, they have to pay their bills.
my grandfather, dying alone in a
hospital in the middle of a pandemic,
we all know the one.
is there a middle to something never-ending.
is there a middle to infinite.
his ashes scattered somewhere i don’t know because
my aunt didn’t want to go to the trouble
of inviting anyone to see.
and we always have to call her first.
and we always have to call her first.
and we always have to call her first.
millions of shirts from forever 21, thrown into
the trash and the trash is poured
into the chile desert.
they say things like slay and taco tuesday
and girls just wanna have funds.
my favorite store when i was a teenager.
the people in korea protest
and that man on youtube makes
a whole set with a budget in the millions
for our entertainment.
he laughs about it. he didn’t
watch all of the show, you can tell.
my friend cries when the girl dies,
pool of blood. cries so hard i see him
shake and then he gets a cold,
months later, gets a cold so bad
he cries again and his ribs break
from all the coughing
and still, the teachers say,
draw this, draw this, i know how you feel
but you have to finish, don’t you?
i’m sorry to hear that but make sure
you turn it in, won’t you?
and my life is signed away in dollars
so that those teachers can be paid
something something thousand a year. not enough.
and the clothes get dumped into the desert,
where we’ll see them,
when we die,
when the earth gets so smothered
she can’t breathe anymore,
buried in our stupid, stupid plastic. i shrug
away the defenses of cryptocurrency
and then go home to wonder
why my friend from high school
won’t get the vaccine.
my grandfather, dying
alone in the hospital, couldn’t form
a real sentence. screaming
on the phone, you have to get me out of here,
you have to get me out.
and the manatees were all gone when we went to see them.
paid tour in florida, kayaks ready
and the guy says, unlucky day, huh.
we don’t know what it’s like to be born
into suffering.
we were lucky. we were lucky.
being born, that’s unlucky.
sorry. i don’t mean to be so dramatic.
sorry. it’s trite, isn’t it? this commentary.
sorry. sorry. sorry. we know.
and the desert would cry if she could.
the sun would cry, if she could.
we’ll see it happen, when we die.
what is peace if not escape.
what is escape, if not running.
Alex Siple is a visual artist and writer who graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a BFA in Animation in 2022. She loves summer rain and movies that make her cry.