Slave/Master Reversal
12 December 2020 Saturday Poetry Prompt: role reversal prompt
Flip the board, queen becomes pawn, becomes the naked musician, the orgy of the winter raises its head, slaps the palms of those that had, and had, and took, and the servant is master for five days.
The relation of human inhumanity to more inhumane decor, the scoffing spitting reversal shame pleading beating scorn heat heat heat damned by the posting of entitlement, stripped to the individual, not the aristocracy that was initially dreamed of.
And is this a reward, or just a break? The licks all taken then discussed for the rest of the year by the oppressed portion, so many more of them, the disdain for a kind of life, or life in general by the constant reduction of the person.
Flip the board, the king becomes rook, becomes a pole to use, to haul in the next batch of wine. And the darkness doesn’t subsist. And no one gets what they paid for.
J.D. Harms 2020
Prompt:
Though perhaps not the only/main portion of Saturnalia, for some reason the reversal of the slave/master position for this festival has always gripped me. It’s remarkable just how much a part of us our internalization of roles is (adult/child, man/woman, etc., etc.). For today’s prompt, write…
