Editorial illustration factory labor

1 Mai
Here is one of the poems by Xu Lizhi, a Foxconn worker who killed himself when he was 24, in 2014, after trying and failing multiple times to turn around his manual labour fate.
(Translation: Elena Chiorean)

„I swallowed an iron piece of moonlight”
I swallowed an iron piece of moonlight
They call it a screw
I swallowed this industrial wastewater, layoff letters
Crushed under machines, that youth dies early
I swallowed the struggle, I swallowed the destitution
I swallowed pedestrian skyways, I swallowed a life overtaken by rust
I can't swallow anymore.
All that I once swallowed is now gushing out of my throat
I am paving the land of my ancestors with
a poem of disgrace.
(Xu Lizhi, 19 December 2013)

https://the-dots.com/projects/editorial-illustration-for-a-poem-402992