3pm

Silver Key · Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Northeast Region · 2024

Inspired by Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl-era photography of migrant workers, this poem reimagines the perspective of a laborer hunched over in a field, anticipating Lange’s arrival. Told through the worker’s voice, it explores the exhaustion of relentless labor, the vulnerability of being photographed, and the tension between personal suffering and public representation. Through the recurring sound of the camera’s shutter and the ritual of the daily 3 p.m. encounter, the poem examines what it means to have one’s hardship captured in a single image while remaining trapped in the reality behind it.

Flash. 
Click.
I heard that split second noise everyday at 3pm.
She was never late,
Never early 
Always on time.

Each flash of the shutter
Every click,
A piece of myself fled.

She reached into my soul 
She grasped all that I had
And took it
She stole it.
Until there was nothing left by the end.
I was deprived of any freedoms I had.

I felt like an undead creature 
exposed to the scorching sun,
turned to ash as he dwindled through decay.

As I worked through the week
Monday
Tuesday 
Wednesday 
Thursday 
Friday.
I knew when to pose.
The exact position.
How to look.

I knew the patterns of shutter speeds,
1000 when she wanted to capture despair
60 when she wanted to capture the heat in the air.

I bent down,
hunched over,
Till my face met with the very ground.
There was no way up.

The heat was at the utmost peak 
My muscles melted,
And drowned the rest of my body.
I lay there 
on the ground.
The hot
Muddy ground. 

Unluckily for me
I knew,
I knew right in that moment
It was 3pm.
Not a moment earlier. 
Not a moment later. 

She was here.
I panicked.
She snapped the photo.
Rewind.
Click.
Snap.
I was caught
Laying near dead on the floor.
I plea to god,
When will this end?

I was on a wild goose 
chasing the exit to this cycle.
But it never ended.
Trapped on this merry go round 
It spun faster 
And faster
Until somebody fell off.