Slideshow

My little starving kid from Ecuador disappeared
and even though I write letters and mail them
to the office in Missouri, no one writes back to tell me that
he starved or died overnight from some disease
carried in unsanitary water
exotic here, but far to common there,
one of those diseases that makes kids' bellies swell,
their arms and legs get toothpick-thin,
their eyes get huge,
full of Sally Struthers despair
but for only a dollar a day you can make a difference
in the life of one little girl or little boy
who desperately needs it
or for another dollar a day you can sponsor
a kid right here in the States
who was born into poverty
and eats out of a dumpster behind McDonals,
whose mother makes sure he gets
three square meals a day
of undercooked/overcooked burgers,
crumbled ice cream cones,
lettuce ends,
half-rotten tomatoes,
and thinks he is blessed
because he still has a chance in life
if he eats his veggies
and doesn't eat candy before
going to sleep at night
because she knows
a smile is worth a thousand words
and a picture painted by a gorilla is worth a thousand dollars
and hung in a museum,
that if a gorilla who has been taught sign language
doesn't know the sign for a thing or a concept
it will make one up
and teach it to the people around it,
that Koko's kitten wasn't her only friend,
that Michael the gorilla learned sign language too
and broke the nation's heart
telling how his mother was murdered by poachers
but he was saved because
baby animals are cuddly and adorable
and baby gorillas look almost human
too cute to kill
but adult gorillas aren't cute
so their feet are sol cheap
as souvenirs to fat couples in white shorts
an coral or turquoise T-shirts
who travel around Africa
with cameras slung around their flabby necks
looking for the strange an unusual
who will go home to their suburban houses
with the neatly-trimme shrubs
framing theh front stairs
to make slide shows and then
bore their neighbors saying
"this is an emu"
"this is a rhino"
"this is some grass"
"next year I thought we might go to China
I heard they eat dogs in China
and they eat monkey brains inhumanely
because they don't kill the monkey but they
cut off the top of its head
and put it up through a hole
in the middle of a round table
and serve it with long straws
for laughing men in business suits to sip
while they negotiate their mergers
and the monkey is still alive screaming,
its brain dying, its heart beating;
it keeps breathing until dessert,"
and watch PBS so they don't have to see commercials
of little starving kids in South America
and feel guilty that they're doing nothing to help,
but even if they spent a dollar a day,
their kid could disappear and they wouldn't
be able to find out anything about him from
the office in Missouri,
though they could learn all about
the plight of the rainforests and the noble gorilla
and the Chinese children going hungry
because the dogs are all too thin
by watching the discovery channel
when the prime time local news is
too harsh for them.