“Never Been Great”

This country was never great. It was always this.
Sacred, blood-soaked soil, paved over,
the bones still underneath.
Built off the labor of tortured Black hands that never chose to be here,
building a country that would auction their children.
Brown hands grow the food we eat.
Same earth. Different price.
We drop bombs on the countries those hands came from,
then drag them to cages when they come here.
Latine families taken mid-sentence, mid-life.
ICE made disappearing legal.
Black men shot dead in their own driveways.
Queer people banned, converted,
removed from the census, the bathroom, the law,
our names already written into Project 2025.
This country never lost its way.
Its destination was always someone else’s grave.
Fuck ICE.
Fuck the state, the lie, the machine.
Fuck Donald Trump.
We don’t want your wars.
We want our goddamn rights.
I am done asking.
We are done grieving quietly.
We are not asking for this country to be better.
We are demanding a restructuring,
a reckoning,
a revolution.

-Art and poem by Gemma Ortwerth