What Rough Beast | Poem for April 2, 2019

Journey Wila McAndrews
Their Dollars vs. Our Cents

No economy can continue to function when the vast middle class and everybody else don’t have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing without going deeper and deeper into debt.
—Robert Reich

money in/ money out/ surge then shortfall/ no government bailouts for the working class/ working poor/ working more/ zero/ sums it up/ 1% profit off our backs/ up against/ their predatory lending walls/ Citi banked on the rich/ food banks for the needy/ tax breaks baked into every loaf of day-old bread/ perverse/ reverse charity/ alms for Kings & Queens/ ill-gotten revenue/ modern-day royalty/ control/ our dismal lives slip-sink/ deeper in debt/ still paying for their subprime sins/ our homes repossessed/

no rainy-day savings/ no shelter from their reign/ terror/ each month our equation the same/ our fears the same/ minuses/ sacrifice/ our necessities and emergencies/ decide/ roof over head or gnawing hunger/ welcome to our Amerikan scream/

work hard/ work harder/ boots and straps aren’t free/ two jobs/ not enough/ can’t buy a way out/ their Amerika built on fees/ we punch their clocks/ their conglomerate sandwiches cost more than our hourly wage/ bet all our bottom dollars/ pay our money and pray/

blade to our throats/ carved by their knife/ stabbed in the back by million-billionaires/ their interest rates/ rent hikes/ we pay with our time-tears-trauma/ our relentless effort and worry/ our can-do attitude/ their won’t do bravado/ our rock bottom funds their bonuses/ their penthouses perched in the sky/ what a view they must have/ our work-a-day lives/ our poverty-row dwellings/ where we count our cents/ their wealth contingent on our nillionaire existence/

call out their greed/ for once/ explain/ their outsized wealth/ our empty hands/ our over-draft accounts/ our assets tax-bracketed into poverty/ their loophole dividends extend to a nirvana of wealth/ built upon wealth/ aided by lobbyists/

our economic inequality/ their wealth-growth/ mindset/ our poverty-death reality/ setting our lives up for failure/ after failure/ after/ all/ in the richest nation in the world/ 99% of us flock to .99 cent stores/ their Dollar Generals strategize in our underprivileged urban-rural landscapes/ their corporate soldiers at war with Amerika’s poor/

where’s their mythical-merciful Savior/ gawd-almighty/ it’s dark as night in their Amerika/ as if/ all the coal was mined out/ nothing to power the light anymore/ bereft/ where the hell is their Christ/ the lip-service patron saint of their fortune doesn’t miracle work for the weak and lowly/ they’re their only gods/ forced to walk among us mere [hu]mans/

they don’t know how the real story goes/ the record of Christians offering hope to the hopeless/ the bread of love instead of an empty plate of retribution/

revolutionary our plight/ resolute our fight/ we won’t give in/ take it/ make it better/ for whatever is left of this earth’s eternity/ in this hell-scape of Amerika/ we will change their climate/ our chance won’t come around again/ to demand dignity/ justice/

freedom from their cruelty/ removing their barriers/ blindfolds/ #MeToo/ reasonable housing and healthcare/ the right to choose/ warmth/ in the time of their frigid madness/ left unchecked/ their narrative won’t change through the ages/ their money in/ our money out/ but our hearts are set towards a different progression/ the deeper we tread/ into their polluted waters/ the more our compassion makes sense

Recent work by Journey Wila McAndrews has appeared in PANK, Appalachian Heritage, The Feminist Wire, and Kudzu Magazine. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Spalding University and an MA in communication from Morehead State University. Journey is completing an MSW at the University of Michigan, where she is a National Community Scholar studying community organization focused on social change through art and literary activism. She lives and writes in both Central Kentucky and the Detroit Metro area.