By Brienne Daugherty
They fed us flaccid chicken TV dinners,
and called them food.
They busted our unions like kneecaps,
and called it giving the working man a voice.
They sold us our own names, filigreed on thick paper,
and called it a proper education.
They used us to fill their cannons, sus out IEDs with disposable limbs,
and called it honor.
They showered us in tear gas, batons flying like frisbees,
and called it protecting the public.
They lit our books ablaze, banished them,
and called it common sense.
They cloister us in our homes, wide eyes, blue screens,
and call it connection.
They cosign the bloody deaths of our children, our future,
and call it freedom.
They sit on our wealth, hoarding it like great, fire-breathing dragons
and call it earned.
They push pills, needles designed to siphon our pleasure,
and call it health.
They approve our requests to be sick
and call them benefits.
They yank our trees out of the Earth like infected hairs, fill our seas with plastic,
and call it economic growth.
WE – will gather at the same table, break bread together,
and remember how to be present.
We will grow gardens, feel our hands in the damp soil,
and learn again how to feed ourselves and our environment.
We will seek truth by reading books that challenge us,
and help education to spread like wildfire.
We will learn to honor those who truly make our lives possible,
and strive to help carry the weight of their sacrifices.
We will lead with aggressive empathy, clean our waters until they are crystalline, fund our libraries until they explode, be open to new ideas, race toward challenges, prioritize accessibility and inclusion, host dance parties, write poetry, forget about trends and hauls and hashtags, welcome our poor tired huddled masses yearning to breathe free the way we always said we would, celebrate each spectrum of humanity and all of their glorious, colorful intersections, demand our children learn in radical peace, lay on blankets in the grass while the sun shines down on us,
and we will call it good.
We will do all of this because we stood up
and told them that THEY no longer get to decide.
About the Author:
Brienne Daugherty received her B.A. in English literature from Ohio Dominican University. Her goal is to craft stories that either heal or traumatize the reader. She self-published her first novel, a body-horror titled Fat Phobia, in 2023. Her flash fiction piece “Daisy” was published in the 2024 Ohio Writers’ Anthology, and her flash fiction piece Snake for Sale – Make Offer was recently nominated for the Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in rural Ohio with her husband, two kiddos, and three grumpy cats.