Club fed he said
where they put
the coal men
the tar men
the pitch men
the deep men
the song men
the lover men
the dance men
the dark men
black black
Club fed where
iron burns
muscle burns
heart burns
lung burns
hand burns
face burns
feet burns
mind burns
bad bad
Club fed for
no stop
bad stop
early stop
late stop
run stop
walk stop
shop stop
one
drop stop
red red
this King & Kennedy country
that fast draws
that kills slow
kills slow
kills slow
kills slow
Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan and American writer, poet, and activist whose work appears internationally in English and in translation. She is the author of the short-story collection, Sleeping Alone (2022), and the forthcoming essay collection, Bon Courage (2023) and the novels A Disobedient Girl (2009) and On Sal Mal Lane (2013), a New York Times Editor's Choice Book. She is the editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine (2015) and co-editor of Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (2018). She writes for the UK Guardian, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe. She is a winner of the Mariella Gable Award for Fiction, and the JH Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. She teaches creative writing in the US and abroad, and is the Director of the Artists Network at Narrative 4.
Photo by Ru Freeman