The Welfare Queen with a Switchblade Smile
Beneath the buzzing kitchen light, the night folds in around her hands,
A fortress made from food stamp ghosts,
where mother-lions make their stand.She guards four mouths with boxed-up pride,
her body bruised by men and time,
The pantry’s empty, faith is thin,
the world outside’s a pantomime.Church ladies
whisper “lazy slut,” with charity on paper slips,
The newsman calls her headline trash,
but never tastes the blood she drips.She’s got scars from jobs that paid in dust,
her knuckles raw, her spine like steel,
A queen in cheap-ass heels who’d stab before she’d ever beg or kneel.
Government men in Sunday ties debate her life behind the glass,
They preach about “the system’s flaw,”
while hiding sins the numbers pass.She sells her pride for powdered milk,
a barcode’s worth of shame to spend,
And every judge who curses her—still needs her labor in the
end.No dignity in charity, no mercy in the hand-me-downs,
She slashes pride for second helpings,
builds her strength from hungry frowns.They call her thief, they call her whore,
the queen who dares to take her fill,
But every slur is just a bruise the world delivered for the thrill.
Each child fed is one more battle, fought with coupons, nerves, and lies,
The neighbors gawk at what they built,
their judgment keen as kitchen knives.She pawned her soul for broken toys,
for rent unpaid, for cheap escape,
Her kingdom’s built on tax forms, thefts,
on tears she swallows for their sake.Every hand
that clutched its pearls helped pave the alley where she prowls,
She’s vengeance born of poverty,
the ghost who never learned to bow.They cut her checks, then raised the rent,
they built the news, then shaped the shame,
But every myth they print of her still wears the children’s hungry name.
Her laughter’s mean, her shadow’s long, she smokes while counting up the loss,
A queen of ash who pays in flesh, whose only luxury is cost.She is not myth,
not lazy trope, she’s justice twisted, bruised,
and wild—The consequence they’ll never face, the sin they birthed, the judge,
the child.A switchblade tucked beneath the tit,
a thousand miles on battered feet,
Bow if you meet her in the street—she’s every debt you won’t admit.If
you want to see the reckoning for every look and muttered curse,
Look close at every checkout lane,
And meet the motherYou made worse.