Are My Hands Clean? Anne Feeney



I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world



The journey begins in Central America

In the cotton fields of El Salvador in a province soaked in blood

Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun

Pulling cotton for $2 a day

Then we move on up to another rung, Cargill

Top 40 trailing conglomerate takes the cotton through the Panama Canal

Out the Eastern Seaboard coming to the U.S. of A.

for the first time

In South Carolina at the Burlington Mills it joins a shipment of polyester filament

courtesy of the New Jersey petrochemical mills of DuPont

DuPont strands of filament begin in a South American country

of Venezuela

where oil riggers bring up oil from the Earth for $6 a day

Then Exxon

Largest oil company in the world upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad

and Tibego

then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic seas to the factories of DuPont on the

way to the Burlington mills

in South Carolina beneath the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador

in South Carolina Burlington factories hum with the Business of weaving oil and cotton

into miles and miles of fabric ordered by Sears

who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea

headed for Haiti this time

May she one day soon be free

May she one day soon be free

Far from the Port-au-Prince Palace, third world women toil

Who in peace work to Sears' specifications

for $3 a day

for $3 a day

My sisters make my blouse

It leaves the third world for the last time

and it comes back into the sea to be sealed and plastered for me

This third world sister

This third world sister

and I go to the Sears department store where i buy my blouse on sale for 20% discount

Tell me, are my hands clean?