Rent or Food, We Have to Choose
Jane reads the letter by the stove
Nine hundred dollars she ain’t got
That’s rent or food — she has to choose
Kids eating noodles from the pot
She counts the years since things went wrong
Laughs once and swallows back the sound
The noise a house makes losing hope
When mercy can’t be found
He joked onstage about going without
Called sacrifice the righteous way
Then climbed in chrome and leather seats
Burned fuel she won’t earn in a day
Numbers vanished, locked from sight
Truth buried where it won’t be seen
Jane splits her pills to last the night
He cuts ribbons, keeps hands clean
He sells you pain and calls it pride
Says real folks don’t complain or quit
Calls hunger staged, says grief has lied
Trades shame for every talking bit
The system broke — that much is true
Beneath his polished shoe
The lie wore gold and walked right through
While truth went barefoot, bleeding too
Woman living down the road
Sold her grandma’s ring for pills
Doctor signed what he was told
Pharmacist just paid the bills
Insurance covered every dime
He called that mercy, freedom’s face
Her kids sleep through the shakes this time
Don’t talk bootstraps when you burned the place
Say her name before she’s gone
Jane, Maria, the next one down
This isn’t theory going on
This is lights cut in a dying town
You want to know what’s real today?
Choosing heat or food to eat
The radiator stays away
He built this flood beneath our feet
Don’t blame the storm or call it chance
The hoax is him — he led this dance
Gene Scott grew up on a tenant farm in Sheffield, Illinois, where strip mines swallowed the prairie and Euclid trucks hauled coal past the kitchen window. His father welded for International Harvester winters and pulled hogs from collapsed mine shafts. His mother drove a hundred miles round-trip to Bradley University three days a week, graduated with honors, and never let them miss a meal. Scott earned degrees from Illinois and Tennessee, married Lana Ferguson on her family’s front porch in Hancock County—the oldest residence in the county, where her Confederate ancestor is buried at the edge of the woods—and raised a son in the Appalachian foothills. His writing draws on Midwestern magical realism, generational memory, and the stories told around oak kitchen tables where stoker men and snake women once drank coffee.
