General Tso’s Chicken A lonely girl sleeping in soot and mud Head teeming with sugary dreams Of pretty American ladies and handsome American men Sipping tea from gold enameled cups It tastes of the tears That catch on her mother’s gray-streaked hair As the girl bends down to kiss her wrinkles For the last time It tastes of the gilded horizon line Whose golden shell begins to rust away As the girl reaches across the ocean with her eyes It tastes of the bitter curses That she shouts at some higher body Passersby glare at her For tainting their American air It tastes of the tears of anguish That leak from her tired eyes And join the other garbage in the sewer Behind the restaurant

Caroline, a sleep-deprived student, is a Jersey Shore gal who loves writing almost as much as she loves junk food. She has been nationally recognized for her fiction work. She enjoys writing pieces that bring attention to social issues because, as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Thomas Paine's Common Sense have proved, words have the power to change the world.