WEBVTT

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Well, while I was
in law school--

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I went to Northeastern
law school in Boston.

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And I went out on
something called

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co-op, which is
their work program,

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in the second and third year.

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I was sent to the
migrant legal action

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program of Washington DC.

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And they, in turn, sent
me out into the fields

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to do outreach among farm
workers in rural Maryland,

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particularly in
Maryland's Eastern shore--

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the Salisbury area.

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And it was there that I began to
her hear all kinds of stories.

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And this next poem is loosely
based on one of those tales.

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It's called "Federico's Ghost."

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"The story is that whole
families of fruit pickers

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still crept between the
furrows of the field at dusk

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when, for reasons of
whisky or whatever,

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the crop duster plane sprayed
anyway, floating a pesticide

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drizzle over the pickers
who thrashed like dark birds

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in a glistening white net.

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Except for Federico, a
skinny boy who stood apart

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in his own green row.

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And knowing the pilot would
not understand in Spanish

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that he was a son of a
whore, instead jerked his arm

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and thrust an obscene finger.

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The pilot understood.

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He circled the plane
and sprayed again,

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watching a fine
gauze of poison drift

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over the brown bodies
that cowered and scurried

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on the ground, and aiming for
Federico, leaving the skin

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beneath his shirt
wet and blistered,

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but still pumping his
finger at the sky.

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After Federico died,
rumors at the labor camp

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told of tomatoes
picked and smashed

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at night, growers muttering of
vandal children or communists

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in camp.

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First threatening
to call immigration,

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then promising every Sunday
off, if only the smashing

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of tomatoes would stop.

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Still, tomatoes were picked
and squashed in the dark.

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And the old women in camp
said it was Federico,

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laboring after sundown to
cool the burns on his arms,

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flinging tomatoes at
that crop duster that

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hummed like a mosquito
lost in his ear

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and kept his soul awake."

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