Alligator Auschwitz

Where the Swamps Swallow the Constitution

Land of the free; home of the caged.

---

They branded it Alligator Alcatraz like this was a theme park.

Like barbed wire in the Everglades could be spun as patriotic.

But we know better.

And we remember what “Never Again” is supposed to mean.

This poem is not metaphor.

It’s warning.

It’s weapon.

It’s thunder.

Read it like the fences are electrified—because they are.

The poem that follows is not polite.

It is not patient.

It is written for the caged,

the silenced,

the ones whose names won’t make headlines —

but whose pain will not go unrecorded.

---

Alligator Auschwitz

They called it Alligator Alcatraz

like this was a game of Monopoly 

and not a goddamn genocide in beta,

like branding brutality in Florida 
swamp chic,

makes the cages more palatable.

Alligator Auschwitz.

Say it with your chest.

Say it with the stench of peeled skin and stale mosquito-bitten 
sweat.

Say it like you’re spitting out blood

because that’s what history tastes 
like

when it loops on repeat.

You think this is metaphor?

This is the warm-up.

This is what it looks like

when fascism wears camo and 
Ray-Bans

and calls itself “law and order.”

The lights stay on 24/7

to keep them disoriented.

Water rationed.

Phone calls denied.

Medication paused

like suffering is a minor 
inconvenience.

You know who else kept the lights 
on?

You know who else controlled the 
names on the ledger?

You know who else said

“we were just following orders”?

I don’t want your sanitized tour.

I want the walls to talk.

I want the guards to lose sleep.

I want every politician smiling in 
photo ops

to wake up gagging on the smoke

of history burning down around 
them.

This isn’t poetry.

This is a goddamn Molotov.

This is me howling at the stars

because screaming into a pillow

never changed a fucking thing.

You want to know what it feels 
like to be an American right 
now?

Like John Wick with a shovel and a rage-filled heart,

digging up the buried guns

we were told to forget.

And this time,

they’re aimed at silence.

At complicity.

At that smug little smirk on your face

when you say “they broke the law.”

Law?

The law once said I was property.

The law once said they had to sit in the back.

The law once said gay was a disease,

and Jewish was expendable,

and internment was necessary,

and torture was liberty.

So miss me with your law.

Your law is a leash with barbed wire teeth.

And we’re done bleeding

They are not “in processing”—

they are being digested

slowly,

by the rotting gut of empire,

its teeth too dull to kill clean

but sharp enough to make them bleed hope

drop

by

drop.

I am no longer writing poems.

I am building bombs

out of breath.

I am loading syllables into 
shotguns

and aiming them

at the myth of American mercy.

Because if this is order,

then let me be chaos.

If this is patriotism,

then I’ll burn the flag

just to light a better path forward.

And I am not alone.

There are thousands of us,

waking up mid-scream

with blistered tongues and 
bloodied pens,

trading lullabies for battle hymns,

trading tears for gasoline,

trading silence

for a war cry.

I will not go quietly.

I will not “wait and see.”

I will not make peace

with a nation building prisons

like they’re fucking playgrounds.

We see you.

We hear the testimonies.

We feel the tremors.

And when the reckoning comes,

don’t you dare say

you were never warned.

Because thunder doesn’t ask 
permission.

It erupts from the pressure,

barrels down the sky like divine 
indictment,

tears through the belly of clouds

like the truth through a lie,

and when it lands —

it shatters windows.

This poem is thunder.

And this time,

you will hear us.

Even if you plug your ears

and hide behind your laws

and sleep like the dead,

we will echo

again

and again

and again—

until your foundations crack

and the wind

carries our whispers

into every courtroom,

every capital,

every camera lens still pretending 
not to look.

So go ahead:

Build your Alligator Auschwitz.

But just know—

we’re coming for it

with torches,

with testimony,

with truth so loud

it’ll make the Everglades shake.

And when the thunder hits—

We will make you remember

their names.

---

With Liberty & Justice for All,

—Rebecca M. Bell

The Bell Rings 🔔

@rmbellwrites