Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry

National Ignorance

Adrienne B. Crossley

College of Liberal Arts
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA USA

http://dx.doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1139

This is a national emergency.

We have a land covered in speakers,

Those who talk in free tongue,

Freer of words,

But listeners are a scarcity.


Who hears the cries of the single mother?

She works a menial job

For a minimum wage

Degrading her pride

And struggles for her child

We hear of her everyday

But her true life story does not matter

It matters not that her husband was killed in Iraq

Or died of a disease he couldn’t afford to get

We just see that she drains our systems

And reaches her hand in our pocket

To put food on their table.


Have you seen the hands of that illegal migrant worker?

Cuts, burns, and blisters

One doing the work of a million men

Living under the radar

In order to make a better life

Coming to a nation where they seem unwanted

The carriers of brooms, the mowers of lawns, carpenters

The harvesters of our nation’s fruit

Yet we are so eager to send them back to a step above hell

Or to an address next to third world,

Because they threaten the very jobs we didn’t want to begin with.


How can he without a womb make choices for she who does?

The givers of life having less and less say

And the fate of her opportunity of choice

Made ill by a man with a pen

Writing laws to control the womanly being

Enslaving the female soul

No man can speak for the lips that do not have a voice


It is all about control,

Control of money,

Control of bodies,

Control of power

But who is thinking about the people

They are the threads that are woven together to make our flag meaningful

The very thing to which we pledge allegiance

If we make the wrong decision this November,

2012 just might be the end of the world.