Market Economy
I found this poem in a literature anthology the other day:
The Market Economy
By Marge Piercy
Suppose some peddler offered
you can have a color TV
But your baby will be
born with a crooked spine;
you can have polyvinyl cups
and wash and wear
suits but it will cost
you your left lung
rotted with cancer; suppose
somebody offered you
a frozen precooked dinner
every night for ten years
but at the end
your colon dies
and then you do,
slowly and with much pain.
You get a house in the suburbs
But you work in a new plastics
Factory and die at fifty-one
When your kidneys turn off.
But where else will you
work? Where else can
you rent but Smog City?
The only houses for sale
are under the yellow sky.
you've been out of work for
a year and they're hiring
at the plastics factory.
Don't read the fine
print, there isn't any.