America, the Flag

The Pledge of Allegiance was as close a prayer as my tongue ever recited. I chanted it morning after morning in the schoolyard, lined in a row amongst rows of all colors of children of immigrants from the Mission, not understanding why we pledged to a limp textile product, which never waved in the San Franciscan fog, not seeing the irony of the flag being held up by a different colored child each day. It was a duty that was clamored for, as cool as being the class officer for the day and getting to feed the colony of guppies. Every morning, I was confused by the line that I heard as “Under God, invisible, with liberty and justice for all.” So I was pledging to a flag and God? Sometimes, I wouldn’t touch my right hand to my heart, and more times, I touched my lips together at the word “God,” a moment of silence for the word that was not a name to me.

The poems for this week from Wind and Inclined make me think of the flag. The American flag, an icon for America and American dreams, but not for its people, maybe. The flag is an image of how I see us, us as in the we who have ever had to explain our right to be here and be the same even if we aren’t seen or accepted as such. The flag is made up of red stripes on a white canvas, with a small blue section that boxes up the stars in a corner. It is a mockery. The stars represent the 50 states, most of them annexed in as the country claimed population for name, for size, expecting the newly collected lands and people to be relieved and grateful for citizenship. The stars, the variations of American dreams, collected in a box, governed by the red and white stripes even though any vein of mine is as red as any vein of yours. Sameness of a different breed, is what the flag says to me. The stars, too, are white, but they are of a different shape, and the points, as four-limbed with a head on top as any person, are interpreted to be amo. Lined in rows, the stars point at each other cornered that box, and they swim in blue immersion, quarantined in bruises.

The poems read to me like the flag: We all live here, standing side by side, but we have designations. The place we live, whether we all call it home, is bordered by the same black borders, but we have designations. Printed bold on a flag we are supposed to hold sacred is the very emblem of dominant holding hostage made subordinate. Arm to arm, legs over top heads, heads beneath pointed feet, the cramped blue corner keeps us sharp; don’t touch me and you won’t get hurt, we at least are together in watching the tidal waves of red and white America. Be grateful for the backward safety of quarantine.

No matter how many mornings we pledged to a flag of no response, we still had cooties by recess, but we did all have cooties.