Mercury Rising ♀

Stitched up 

by

a fast 

fashion 

fabrication 

of someone else’s 

40 wink dream-

Not 6

not 7 

not 8

not 9

saved 

in time

but

14 to 

16 hours

a day 

staring through the eye of a needle-

Many hands

make

winged feet 

destined to fly

to different shores-

Meet 

Sunita

caught 

in the

drenching rain 

of the 

sports shoe

sweat shop;

while 

like Mercury rising

we soar 

head in the clouds

over and above 

the land of

Just Do It

trailing poison

through the

very stars in 

our wake-

Let's talk about

solidarity

© Bex Tate

Sweatshops in Bangladesh | War on Want

Bex, frustrated with the data driven education system, left her teaching job behind and is still wondering what to do next. Writing poetry helps her to try and make sense of the world, as well as giving her the chance to rant a bit!

Rohingya

No bricks, no mortar,
but bamboo and mud,
huts of the homeless.

Displaced masses,
With futures left behind
on well trod paths,
occupy borrowed land.
But interest must be paid
in compound despair
and shattered dreams.

Hollowed eyes,
faces that have lost their shine,
looking for help
which never arrives.

The legacies
of England's bloody empire.
Writ large for all to see.
Those looks are not returned.

Suu Kyi's lips move,
Trump's echo is heard,
Western shoulders shrug.

They are the forgotten
but not the few.
They are 700,000.

© Peter K Jones

Rohingya surviving in 'the world's largest refugee camp'

Peter K Jones is of mixed Welsh/Burmese descent and is struggling to understand the stance of Aung San Suu Kyi towards the Rohingya.

Catwalking in Catastrophe

She wore a borrowed dress
Nor did her crown belong to her
Still, she looked beautiful
Stalking between vassal ranks
Of fawning, enchanted courtiers
Breathing a miasma of greed, lust, envy…
She spurned them all
At once a predator and a prey
Prowling zombie-eyed
Face a corpse-like mask,
Lips swollen as if gorged with blood…
Regal she turned, oblivious of her disciples,
Down the wolf-whistle, sighing walk
Back to the paint, powder and chaos
Of the real world…
Shedding her borrowed finery
Which would be catalogued and copied
To be sold for a pittance
In High-Street temples of commerce…
Laden with bags with escutcheons
Much more familiar…much more affordable
Than this unique Dolce-Gabbana creation
A bargain at a mere £32,000!
I doubt if the Saturday night revellers
Preening in their day’s purchases
Would give a moment’s thought to…
The price of the original…nor…
The nine hundred souls crushed under concrete
Erected carelessly by inefficiency and greed
Working fourteen hours for coppers
Making cheap copies of such ‘borrowed’ dresses
Nor of the starving Syrian child
Staring at us in fear and bewilderment
Sharing the page with this icon of consumerism.

© Peter Flint

Refugees Fleeing Syria are ‘Mostly Kids’
Woman rescued after 17 days in Bangladesh rubble
$32,000 Dolce & Gabbana Dress

The poem arose out of the juxtaposition of a Dolce-Gabbana dress which sold for $32,000 with the image of a starving Syrian child.  In the same newspaper it was reported that the death toll in the collapse of a clothing factory in Pakistan had risen to five hundred and that the designer had been arrested and charged.  He had allegedly added several floors to the original plan at the owner’s request.

Blood Red Dress

For your daughter
You buy,
A scarlet dress
Shot with silver shimmering thread,
Pure white bolero cardigan,
Ankle socks,
Five pairs of them
Trimmed with broderie anglaise
And an ersatz Cath Kidston handbag,
All for less than twenty euro.

At home, on the television
In the heat of Bangladesh,
Survivors hurtle
Down fabric makeshift slides
Over rubble,
Over dead bodies,
Three hundred, they have estimated.

You hear,
The next day,
Survivors
Still being hauled
From under heavy dry rubble.
The number of dead has risen,
Close to four hundred and
Primark say,
They'll compensate
The victims' families,
The orphaned children.

And all this
So your daughter can wear,
A scarlet dress
Imbued
With shimmering
Silver,
Sweat,
Blood,
Tears.

© Angela Finn

Primark to aid Bangladesh disaster families

Angela Finn lives in Dublin. She has been shortlisted for the Francis MacManus and Penguin Short Story competitions 2012 and came third in the 2013 Fish Short Memoir competition.

Swallowed

Time and tide wait
For no man they say
But here the tide swallows
The whole of the bay.

Where once we called home
The ocean laps high
We swam and we paddled
And we waved it goodbye.

But the waves kept on coming
And still they rise now
Oh to stem back the waters
I wish I knew how.

I'll wait for that message
A voice in the dark
To tell me that it's time
To begin on my ark.

© James Bessant

Sea Change: the Bay of Bengal's vanishing islands

James lives in London, and has been writing stories and poems for some years. His blog can be found at jamesbessant.blogspot.co.uk