Star-Spangled
Until 2016, star spangled was just a description of a costume I would wear, dancing in the streets with my sister in a Mardi Gras krewe, dancing with tequila and jello shots,
Then Merrick Garland filled my dance card, Obama setting us up, sending us out on our first date. I still hold that against him. Riding on the coattails of American Imperialism had worked just fine my whole life, thank you very much
Though it was those Republican senators who decided that 8 Supreme Court Justices was enough. Who cares what the Constitution says? Wait, we care, we all care. No, 8 justices is justice enough.
Never mind that sparkly Mardi Gras is a season, that cheap toxic beads become a currency that can buy you love, a flash, a sip off a flask, a grind with a total stranger;
moments after the parade has passed, you are left with a dirty street and a hangover.
Injustice lacks a start and an end, injustice is waking up again and again, the cottony taste of regret in your mouth, the dry eye of anger, bile at the back of your throat.
I was brought up on princesses in fairytales, on knights in shining armor, white horses and all. Happy endings, the in-laws always had enough money to bail out my father’s latest scheme. White skin, blue eyes, American dentistry.
Politicians aren’t princes, and Air Force One isn’t a white horse
O say Jose Jesús Yohamed
Have you ever been the only white girl in a sea of dark haired men? In a flood of no one who speaks your language, no one who looks like you?
Jesús comes to the House of Representatives each morning. The preacher calls him Jesus, thanks him and his daddy profusely.
“separation of church and state” much?
Here, put on my rose-colored glasses, we all need my rose colored eyes
Can you see, by Dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
We’re in this together, fox hole lovers, no atheists in war.
We won’t tell you the truth and, the movie? The movie doesn’t tell you the whole story.
You people only see what you want to see. You see a vet, you think PTSD.
I’m not angry, I’m frustrated. You people want to throw money away, you want to turn the whole state into a goddamn yuppy hippy hipster liberal shithole that’s what you want to do, take our guns, ruin our children, make the whole goddamn state like goddamn Portland, weak, pathetic
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming
Streaming like scrappy Mexicans, across the border, wave after wave,
criminals taking our jobs, raping our women, selling drugs to our kids, wave after wave
rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air,
there was proof that our flag was still there;
Still there, just as we are, still here, fighting for justice,
fighting for the best for people we don’t know, maybe don’t want to know, turn away from them, cross the street from them, close the gate on them
Jose, does the star-spangled banner still wave O'er the land of the free?
Free? Free from the long arm of government, biceps built like an inmate’s who has nothing to do but pump iron, the inmate lifting the same weight over and over, no thoughts in his head, bad thoughts in his head, anger mellowed. Mostly.
and the home of the brave?
We are brave in so many ways. We speak up we speak out we bite out tongues. We stand out we stand up we sit in. We are brave in so many ways. Are we brave enough? Are we all brave enough?
We put our hands over our hearts, I put my hand over my heart.
“With liberty and justice for all,” my sign said.
“’Justice for all’? Who’s that for? What’s that about?” The veteran asks me from his well worn wheelchair after the 4th of July parade. He doesn’t say, “those damn immigrants” he doesn’t talk about the wall. I am finding my way, finding my voice, and I meekly proudly cowardly tell him just that they are the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance.
When we take away the United States, take away the republic,
take away that we are one nation, that we are under God, that we are indivisible,
we can no longer see liberty and justice for all.
