I think the theme of the poem is about how lawyers stress about cases. When the author talks about the sting of the glue, he is referring to the reality of how the working class people get payed less than they should even though they put in more work. As opposed to someone who is a lawyer for example and gets payed much much more than the working class man but doesn’t punch out as many hours as they do. Another analogy that we can use is back in the early 20th century where we have farmers who work very hard and could lose everything in one day of bad weather or one bad season but the businessmen or government men keep their jobs for as long as they please. Overall the author knows that people of the working class should be honored by society more for their work. Who Burns for the Perfection of PaperAt sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands would slide along suddenly sharp paper, and gather slits thinner than the crevices of the skin, hidden. The glue would sting, hands oozing till both palms burned at the punch clock. Ten years later, in law school, I knew that every legal pad was glued with the sting of hidden cuts, that every open law book was a pair of hands upturned and burning.—Martín Espada
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AuthorSophomore at San Marcos High School Archives
May 2017
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Photos used under Creative Commons from The National Guard, Evan Didier, woodleywonderworks, Ronald (Ron) Douglas Frazier, aaronrhawkins, Ryan Dickey, dronepicr, Matthew Wilkinson