Date: 8/21/07
Start: 9:17
End: 9:47
Working Hands
by Francisco X. Alarcon
“Working Hands” is a poem composed of 5 couplets. Each couplet doesn’t follow rhyme or meter. However, the repetition of the word “we” and “your” at the first and second couplet produced a certain beat that made the poem lively.
To further analyze the poem, I will discuss it per line and per couplet.
“We clean your room” can be interpreted as a line stated by a worker. It simply explains that dirty works/messy occupations were given to these “we”.
Moreover, on stanza 2, “we” explains that not only cleaning “your’s room” were their job, but also washing “your’s dishes.”
By this point, we will wonder who this “we” and “your” is. By using the words “clean” and “do”, I can simply conclude that this “we” is a worker or an individual belonging in the working class. And this “your” belonged to a higher class, or the ones that dominate the society.
The mention of the “footnote” is symbolic. Usually, footnote, is placed below the text to further explain unfamiliar term/s. With this, I can conclude that “we clean your room”, and “we do your dishes” were used as footnotes to simply show or elaborate the real situation of those individuals belonging in the working class.
By the end of the poem, the “we” pointed out that “one day”, “these hands” or their working hands, “one day will write the main text of this land”. This simply explains that these “we” longed to express their selves through their writings. That one day, they will bring out their experience as individuals who dwell in the lower level of society.
To study also the context of this poem, this was made to let the readers come “closer to the experiences of Latinos in the United States.” By this, you could basically apply the Post Colonial theory of powerless vs. powerful. Even though US is not a colonizer of these Latinos who chose to leave in the States, still you can smell a political undertone inside its couplet. All in all, the poem invites you to be part of their “colored worlds”.
Working Hands
Francisco X. Alarcon
we clean
your room
we do
your dishes
a footnote
for you
but hands
like these
one day
will write
the main text
of this land
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