LABOR POEM OF THE WEEK: In Response to the Prompt "Write About the Invention of the Sunkist Bottle"
Chris Garlock | Published on 6/27/2024
What is this Sunkist of which you speak? I've got 7-up, Dr. Pepper and RC Cola listed on my canteen sheet, but due to it costing $1.27 a pop and me making 40 cents an hour, I haven't had a soda in so long I don't even remember what the bottle looks like. I work in a hot institutional kitchen cooking for 500, washing the dishes and taking out the trash after because of the 15 assigned to work there, only five of us do a damn thing to get the job done. That's three hours of work doing three people's jobs for three minutes of sipping on a fizzy drink. No thank you. I'll take one of those Kirkland brand sparkling waters at 58 cents each. Thank you Costco for getting in bed with the prison industrial complex to give me a two for one special on the way off off brand soda. And as for who invented the bottle, not like it's a radically different design from a clay jug with a cork top and wax seal used thousands of years ago. It's just been updated to the 21st century standard of 100% plastic, all the better to grow garbage island with and generally contribute to global warming. Which somehow brings us back to that hot ass kitchen. I better get back to it, in five and a half hours I'll be able to buy a jar of peanut butter
By Amber Kim, an incarcerated writer in the Washington Corrections Center for Women.