We lived in a sorority of conspiracy.
When the lights came on you scattered
to the most comfortable nooks,
became the lord’s borrowers,
hoarded edam and crumb bushels
behind base molding and outlets.
Like those who traded revolutions
for swivel chairs and rolodexes,
chastise those of us caught in the light,
explain away what you used to know.
Turn Saint Sebastian upside down,
but he’s still an arrow-quilled porcupine.
“It didn’t have to be this way,”
words to tutor a stomach growth.
If you held to your guns you’d still have guns.
Mean like Lenin without the mean, wrap
yourself in Jacobin bylines like a letter jacket,
forget the golden rules.
No one remembers “selling out,”
a lesson for a vulgar old school.
You’re playing three-dimensional chess,
or a secret jazz whose only rule is you.
Tish Turl and Adam Turl, Born Again Labor Tract 46: Selling Out - mixed-media collage and painting, digital prints, acrylic, marker, ink, coffee, post-it notes, stickers, wig hair, glitter, cotton and ash on stretched canvas, 48 x 60 inches (2025)
This poem originally appeared in Locust Review 13 (Winter 2025/2026)