As Us

A Space for Writers of the World

Lisa Hase-Jackson – Poetry

Cesar Chavez

 

Mom never bought grapes

when I was a kid because of

the boycott, which she explained

 

to me in great detail

though I was only seven.

Somehow I got it confused with

 

the picket lines at school

we couldn’t cross and focused

my efforts on getting to Grandma’s

 

where I could eat all the grapes

I wanted, white or red,

peeling their skins

 

off with my teeth and stuffing

my mouth so full

drool seeped from

 

the corners of my lips.

I never understood

the tension that rose

 

between my mother and hers

over the purchase of grapes,

but the boycott worked

 

and after the collective

bargaining agreement was signed

my mother found other things

 

to boycott, like Folger’s coffee,

her mother’s favorite brand.

 


??????????????Lisa Hase-Jackson a holds a Master’s Degree in English from Kansas State University and is pursuing her MFA at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Her poems have most recently appeared in such literary magazines as Kansas City Voices and Pilgrimage and anthologized in Lift the Sky. She is the editor of 200 New Mexico Poems.

 

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