#title Cassandra in Chains
#author Ada Ardére
#SORTauthors Ada Ardére;
#date 2025
#source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/417-winter-2025/cassandra-in-chains]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-02-21
#notes Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025

Justice is vengeance in a world mad for blood.

Justice is debt when the slavers need their quota.

One-million innocents in one-million shackles:

one-million head of oxen

and the cops lick their lips like cannibals

when the masses scream ‘They deserve to suffer!’

.

Animal experiments extend to the wretches,

humanity ripped from them for any convenient reason,

and those too poor to be exempt from the slaughter

weep in their cages in brutal, enforced silence,

where justice is a mask worn by lovers of power.

.

A prison is a prophecy of the future of a people.

Her invisible walls stretch past the barbed wire,

further and further until all are trapped within

and all of the heartlessness no longer only applies

to those unlucky enough to be known by a number.

.

Whatsoever is taken, whatsoever is stolen

from the backs of the faceless and weakest,

will be taken and stolen in time from the rest

who are neither a guard nor a master.

Ada Ardére is a Puerto Rican poet from New Orleans living in Kansas City. She studied philosophy of art and Plato, and loves beat poetry. Her writing has recently appeared in <em>34<sup>th</sup> Parallel Magazine, Wussy Mag, Writers Resist</em>, and the <em>New Southern Fugitives</em>.