Walking Through The New ADC Telecommunications Factory by Sandra Sidman Larson

Walking Through The New ADC Telecommunications Factory

Sandra Sidman Larson

Shakopee, Minnesota

Electrical equipment dangles from the ceiling.
Technicians bundle colored wires
into twisted pairs and noise drowns out

the words of these Hmong and Somali
refugees assembled in bays who
do not talk of the rivers and oceans

they have crossed. Ear-phoned off
from discussion, their thoughts clutter
the factory aisles so spotlessly.

In this mechanical palace, my CEO wants
floors kept absolutely spotless—
so clean you see your own reflection.

They stare at us from behind their safety
goggles as we pass by, and we do not see
the rows of stacked bodies

skirted, or the remains of burnt-down villages
abandoned; nor do we ask about their blood-red
rivers, and they don't question us as we pass by.

Sandra Sidman Larson has published in numerous journals. Naomi Shihab Nye nominated her for a Pushcart Price as did the editors of the The Literary Bohemian. She has three chapbooks to her credit, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens and Over a Threshold of Roots, both published by Pudding House Press, Columbus Ohio, and Calendar Poems, a self-published chapbook. She is the former founder and director of the ADC Telecommunications Foundation.

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