Remembering the Grape Pickers

You won’t remember, but mother
never agreed to stop buying table
grapes—I didn’t know the issue
or the reasoning—but isn’t it all
and always about profit over people
—treating others as you will treat
them—so in Chavez’s day—you
weren’t there—but you can light
the candles now—make way
for the party—be the communion
of folks just wanting to be, to be
treated, to be treated as more—
to be treated as more than equal
to an apple, a grape, a nectarine.
If we had known—really—I think
mother would have agreed.

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His chapbook Forests of Woundedness is forthcoming this fall from Seven Kitchens Press. Wiezorek’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, and Lucky Jefferson. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and authored Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011).