What Rough Beast | Poem for January 15, 2018

Freesia McKee
Precedents 20:17

For I was hungry and you gave me a drug test. I was thirsty and you poisoned my water.
I was a stranger and you sent me away. I needed clothes and you sexually assaulted me.
I was sick and your company denied my coverage. I was in prison and I became something else to you, my freedom changed into your free labor.

How do the righteous answer? “A common hunger, a common thirst, a common need?’” When did we begin to see you as a threat? When did we begin to believe we wouldn’t have to pay? When did we see you sick and in prison? Who labors for free? When did we decide our greatest joy was over-filling our plate?

The King will reply, “Whatever you ignored this year, you did for me.”

 

Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her words have appeared in cream city review, The Feminist Wire, Painted Bride Quarterly, Gertrude, Huffington Post, and in the anthology Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016), edited by Fox Frazier-Foley and Erin Elizabeth Smith. Freesia lives in North Miami.

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