We Were Spectators
I
Our cry, silenced.
We watch the murder of our freedoms
Like spectators at a lynching.
Our Twenty-first-century forbearance rubbed out,
Our twentieth-century sensibilities never happened.
High court corruption,
A misogyny hell-bent on a 19th-century revival.
In its myopic mendacity,
In its mockery of fundamental democracy,
We all take great comfort in knowing
A woman’s body is now state-regulated.
There is great solace in knowing how
Raped little girls will be forced to give birth.
II
Our cry, silenced.
Oh, see all the words never included,
Never even considered in the Constitution:
“Lesbian,” “gay,” “desegregation.”
Too busy were the founders with tending
Their slaves in 1789.
Too busy they were in stealing land from
Native Americans.
The founders never wrote of Jews or Muslims,
They never knew the word “Latinx.”
But something in the mischief of children
Tells us who we really are today!
Not when women were executed for witchcraft.
Not when the founders made a Constitutional guide
Like sausage.
Published: Dissident Voice 10/23/22
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