Overturned

Overturned

reads the headline

glaring from my screen

like a gun leveled at my temple

like vile hands pinning me down

like agony that slices my body open

Overturned

is my stomach,

like a storm of violent tides,

bulging with horror, disbelief, fury

pregnant

with a womb full of rage

Overturned

are our grandmothers

screaming in their graves

the same words they yelled

half a century ago

fight, fight, fight

Overturned

are the truths we hold

spun into something unrecognizable

twisting right, right, right

until they are simply

wrong

Overturned

is the world beneath my feet

rolling back, back, back like a treadmill

my legs burning for the right to stand

but still I run, gripping the bucking bull

for they will not break my spine

Overturned

our traitor state must be

where oppression is our legacy

where our grandmothers are freer than our daughters

where we’ve been sold, imprisoned, deported, slaughtered

in the name of long-dead founding fathers

who upheld oppression through an ancient constitution

and still offer us no restitution

from this womb

I birth

a revolution