Gratitude
How to worship power
You should be down on your knees
(like she was),
thanking God for your
good fortune
(and hers)
bemused awe, you’re entitled
to as much as your puny little wallet can buy,
even if you make yourself sick,
(we forced her)
wolfing it all down in one sitting.
Look at those headlines, the attention
(before we forced ourselves on her)
you’re getting
On your knees, boy. Don’t make me tell you twice.
Feel the amazing blessing of luck and wealth
you filthy peasants should be filled with
because
your daughter
was lucky enough
to be raped
by rich, white men
with power and influence.
On
Your
Knees.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me. Some of my fiction might have provoked divorce proceedings in another state.😈
MA English literature, College of Charleston
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Comments (2)
This hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting—especially the way the poem repeats “On your knees” like it’s not just a command, but a kind of twisted ritual. I felt sick reading the line about “your daughter was lucky enough to be raped,” because it’s such a brutal reminder of how people try to turn trauma into something that benefits them, like the victim is a trophy or a story to boost their status. It made me think about how often society asks for gratitude from the wrong people, and how silence gets treated like consent. I’m curious—when you wrote this, was there a specific real-life moment or headline that pushed you to put it in such a raw, confrontational voice?
Okay... I really do not know what to say here.