Tacoma Center 1600 Nana Grizol

Tacoma Center sixteen hundred suffer sleepless nights
No phone calls home to families, no reading, no Miranda rights
A second tier of prison, as if the first was not enough
It seems a citizen’s great promise is
A place to stretch when they lock you up

But either way, they are commodifying someone
As if said someone ever could just fade away:
The dreary endless days don’t pass like numbers on a page
They sit in silence ‘til they rail against the irons of their cage

But it's such a casual addition to supplies, to chains, to flows
Tucked between logistics systems, a lock factory, a railroad
As billboards picture families, reunited in their homes
Buses carry “unnamed” inmates
To unnamed jails, on unnamed roads

It is a euphemistic package for apartheid
A billion dollars earned in someone else’s blood
A manufactured answer to a xenophobic question
How to monetize the labors lost from deportation trolls

Hundred and twenty five dollars a bed
Hundred and twenty five dollars a head
And on weekends we gathered outside of the gates
Just to read off the names of the dead