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Thomas DeFreitas was born in Boston. Educated at the Boston Latin School, he attended the University of Massachusetts (Boston and Amherst) for two years. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Ibbetson Street, Pensive, Plainsongs, and elsewhere. Thomas’s first chapbook, Winter in Halifax, was published in 2021 by Kelsay Books. His full-length collection, Longfellow, Tell Me, is forthcoming from the same publisher. A resident of Arlington, MA, Thomas is an active member of the New England Poetry Club, of Boston’s Black Seed Writers, and of Arlington’s Bee Hive Poets.

Working Girls

Thomas DeFreitas

I have never known your pain,
never felt your weariness
of life’s treatment, of the traffic
and trade of precious things
survival can sometimes entail.
I honour your endurance.
I would soothe your anguish,
give deep sleep to your tired eyes,
calm your nerves, hush your fears.
And I would do still more:
I would raise you to the altars
of a new church, where the last
truly are the first, where power
kneels to destitution, and
where men adept at righteousness
with fluent weeping wash the feet
of women whom the spiteful deem
to be beyond redemption’s reach.

— Thomas DeFreitas

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