Consider the child with curly brown
hair sleeping with her dog in the back
of an old SUV while her parents doze
in scruffy front seats tilted back.
Consider the child with brown skin
called nigger and told to go back
to Africa, whose great grandparent
built the road running past the school.
Consider the woman pregnant from
rape, the woman who could not take
off work to cross two states for
an abortion, who tries hard to love
her child but he looks more and
more like that nightmare rapist.
Consider men and women who worked
the assembly line till their ears
dimmed out, back, kidneys rotted
wanting a pension to reward them
with sunshine. But the company
no longer has to pay its promises.
Consider the family whose home
will be taken by the bank while they
can no longer pay for the pills
for cancer that cost a month’s wages
every month. So their daughter
dies and they’re still in debt. But
Herr President, you cannot even
see them; they’re just too small.
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