On Ecuadorian Child Labor 

i. 

i grow from bananas. 

single seed and sunlight eyes 

yellow flesh 

wrapped in cool leaves 

i dangle green upside down until harvest 

when boys with machetes cut me down 

stab my stalk with curvos 

bag my fruit and throw me with the rest 

i cry out 

they stamp me with a Dole sticker. 

ii. 

i was seven. 

they hand me a machete and send me into jungle that is too familiar the air is sweet and the soil is soft 

i take a deep breath in and slice at stalks 

a boy with a machete 

a man 

skin of a bruised peel 

announces aerial fumigation 

i don't know what it means 

but I hold my shirt over my nose and continue to work my eyes burn 

and my lungs rot inside of me 

collapsing over each other 

two banana stalks crumbling 

but still i work

iii. 

this is not the jungle I remember. 

it is not trees or fruit 

or bananas or sun 

it is plantation 

and fungicide and insecticide and pesticide i rip fruit with my bare hands 

lay leaves to rest at my feet 

machete slices stalk 

machete slices arm 

the sap burns red 

blood trickles down my wrist 

falls to jungle 

i take $3.50 and give them my hand they toss it in with fingers and legs 

and send me back into the field 

a boy with a machete 

iv. 

they lay me down to rest 

among banana leaves and 

soil that scraped the flesh from my feet i dream of math and reading 

a teacher scoops soil into her palms 

lays it on broken leaves 

they call my death compost 

my hand forgets everything but machete grip i close my eyes under skies that sear my eyelids decompose into the ground 

die with the bananas 

a boy with a machete 

leaves nothing behind 

but a Dole sticker