by Emily Fernandez

We saw the best minds of our generation lulled by manufactured reality technology
and uninspired plastic, lose their ambitions to the crunch of ever-demanding
invisible bosshands, washed away in tidal wave debt, barely able
to get past the single hope of a cheaply fashionable survival sitcom
they can call their own, blinded by rectangular glow screens,
forgetting in the end what we need to survive,

held in abeyance by the deaf justice of grand jury chokeholds
and the systematic tear gas racism that leaves black and brown
men breathless as presidential potential is shoved down poverty throats
with privilege shaped spoons while brains cry out from overcrowded
no-go zones of the for-profit miseducation prison complex,

auto-tuned out by the falsegod secrets that China-made charity shoes
and mini-suvs can navigate us to the new & improved humanrights
that lowly hang on petrified trees and can be dropped like bombs
by the virtual will of good looks and quick likes

and that oranges unravel in bottled water test-tubes and can pack themselves
safely into weightloss ice cream dreams while the earth buries acid tears
in cold ocean chests like a madwoman raped by men with mountain-top removal
baldness and clogged tar sands arteries.

Karl if you have been hijacked, then we have been hijacked.

Holy holy holy are the rough-handed women who walk into the cathedrals
of science and carpentry unashamed by their spiritual thirst,
clothed only in the namebrands of fairness and justice.

Holy Holy Holy are the men unstrapped from the suicidal bombs of derivative,
now singing to their unbundled babies the unabridged lullabies of truth.

Holy holy holy are the people once dosed with the artificial colors
of over-the-counter radioactivity now rising once again like the multitudes of grass
chanting against weapons of commercialize sound bites,
chanting once again that they are not too small to prevail.

This poem was submitted as part of our communal poetry project, voces (voices) of the people (poets). If you’d like to contribute, please review the link, and send your poem to betweenfigandyork@gmail.com