If there is a point, help me find it.

Is it selfish to celebrate

my small victories when our liberties

could wretched away before twilight?

Grandma is nearing ninety

& the pregnant thunderheads threaten

new floods her bible cannot comprehend.

My gnarled fingers bleed still

but I’ve sculpted my melancholia

with words and barbed wire

into roses for Rose, while the fine

thread of America unravels like a cheap shirt

thrown into a washer.

My new coworker is expecting

but can’t claw her way out

of the shelter, and for her those muddy waters

claw at her neck.

I still dream: maybe one day I’ll own

a home with a verdant lawn, a virile mango

tree out back.  I dream: tall bookshelves,

the musk of new paper, fresh prints.

But in that cold ghost vision

the lights don’t turn on, fridge

empty as a savings account.

No real difference between my uncle’s couch

& a king sized bed. 

I dream, I dream.        How many

“once in a lifetimes” warp dreams into nightmares?

There are dark times…

& then there is this.

Kashawn Taylor is a formerly incarcerated writer from Connecticut. His work has been or will be published in such magazines and journals as Poetry, Solstice, Jelly Bucket, Sequestrum, and more. His full-length collection of "prison poetry" was published in March 2025 by Wayfarer Books. Keep up with him on Instagram: @kashawn.writes.