Oscar Wilde, 'A Hanging in Prison'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

A Hanging in Prison
(From “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”)

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’ Parade;
We did not care; we knew we were
The Devil’s Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.

( So still it lay that every day )

Picking Up a Job Application // Minnie Bruce Pratt

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

A spring wind hustles hundreds of pages into the street,
discarded leaflets like pieces of a shredded textbook
under the feet of high school students let out for lunch.

A young woman bends and grasps a flier: sliver of promise,
passport to enter through the golden arches, gateway to the west,
up escalator to immediate opportunity, and prosperity
    somewhere
higher, those sky-reaching towers across the river looking down
    on her
and the crowd scrambling to buy a dollar- forty-nine-cent special
    meal.

Required? Just the have-a-good-day sticker on her backpack,
the smiley face plastered over her eyes and nose and mouth every
    day.
And one thing more, of course: Fill in application on the reverse--
English only please. She speaks Hindi, Arabic, Tagalog, Spanish,
Greek, half a dozen other tongues hide behind her smiles. The day
she says Hello to her first customer is the day she says Hello
to the other women behind the counter, who are talking, but not
    smiling.