unprecedented: a poem

Margaret Price (Spokane, WA ’25-26) shares a poem she authored in relation to her experience as a Jesuit Volunteer serving at Northeast Youth and Family Center.

I recently went to an open mic night, and I read this aloud, the same day I wrote it: I work at a food and resource pantry for families, and these are my thoughts on the word unprecedented.

I’m a full-time Jesuit Volunteer, and I had a panic attack on the way to work this morning. Because I left my wallet at the community garden while on my way to the resource pantry. Because actually, there is no time to cry when there are 7 women asking you for diapers and clothing and food, and it’s all on you because everyone is living in fear and no one else is here to volunteer; there is only action.

and you can never give them enough. not the “enough” that their human dignity deserves. 42 million Americans on SNAP. 1 in 8 American households. and the tightness wraps around my chest as the Congress stands still— but then, I melt in the brown eyes of their children, and for a moment, I am standing still.

Then I’m sitting on the bus again, another headline with its hands around my throat, again. I feel the stress accumulating in my shoulders, already weighed down by the crumbling of an empire.

You feel it too, don’t you?

the crush of the rich upon the poor, the apathy of the upper-middle-whatever you wanna call it class, a class that I certainly don’t belong to, or maybe in some ways with my inherited Coach purse and college degree, I do, or I was supposed to. that was the promise of those who keep telling me, “these times are unprecedented.” unpredictable? how is any of this unprecedented? for two generations, we lived with the promise of “work hard, and you too can live the American dream.” What was the American dream?? Who was it actually for?

It was certainly not for the refugees I greet in the food pantry. It was definitely not for me, a 21 year old woman with a degree in political science and public administration whose passion is food justice. It was not for my immigrant great grandparents who whitewashed their Italian name and lost my heritage to survive. Who is this country for?

unprecedented. I am sick of that word.

I’ve grown up in unprecedented times. by definition, that means with no precedent.

as if empires have not crumbled before.

as if the powerful have not oppressed the poor and hungry before.

as if charismatic, corrupt leaders have not risen to power before.

as if our selfishness has not brought society to its knees, begging for “normalcy” before. but are we begging for the garden before the fall, or the comfort of Egypt left behind and we are in the wilderness?

To two generations, the word unprecedented coaxes them back to times of “normalcy”. the postwar era peace was never peace, it was a proxy Cold-War while our grandparents got planted, plugged into suburbia comfort complex captialism, fostering willful amnesia, a desire for comfort— reminder, post-war. but is this better? It can always get worse, and

we are the ones to live through these cracks and crumbles with our eyes wide open.

there is precedence. this is the fall we live in.

But “you were created for such a time as this.”

Maybe we were born to fill in those hairline and gapping cracks in “American Dream” by hoisting up our sleeves and creating anew, not to restore or rebuild, but start completely anew as normal rots from the core.

this is my prayer: that we may be microbial compost entities, taking what was dead and rotting and raising up life in little ways each day.

people have lived through this social suffering before, but you haven’t. What will you make of it?