America The Brave

Written in times of controversy.

I was born an American Flag

American made; red blood in my veins

Blue in my eyes and fifty stars in my pupils

 

I am The Star-Spangled Banner

My history repeated at every football game

Sang by men, women and children alike

 

I am white America

Born into an undeniable amount of privilege

My pigment a favorable shade

On a wheel

Full of colors much more appealing

 

I am white America

Pure, innocent, complete

But I am a color without color

Translucent, a ghost of a thousand souls

Whose colored footsteps walked here before my own

A thousand souls who’s concealed cries

Live indirectly in my conscience

 

 

I am female America

Born with two legs, two feet and a heartbeat

But seen only as a walking pair of breasts

With a warmth between the legs and

A body made of skinny bones

That can only be broken by the fingers

Of a man

 

I am female America

Weighted with the atrocities inflicted upon my sisters before me

The atrocities that paved the way for my mother to tell me

“Don’t walk alone after dark”

And my father to tell me to change my clothes

Because the skin on my shoulder might be too revealing

To a man...a boy

Who has never, and will never

Understand what it means to feel frightened

Just because of your gender

 

I am gay America

Beaten and bruised with the confliction that

Something went wrong when I was created

That God- or whoever may be up there

Spit on the sperm and the egg in my mother’s stomach and laughed

At the fact that my life

Would forever be defined by the gender of the person

I fall asleep next to every night

 

I am gay America

Pelted with the stares and glares of strangers

Their hearts filled with revulsion so vile

That the sight of a man and his husband

Or a woman and her wife

Would make them protect the eyes of their children

And turn away

As if they had just witnessed a murder

Not two people, sharing a moment of compassion

 

 

I am America

A past filled to the brim with brutality, hatred, confrontation

Covered up by the inflated ego of a million likeminded people

Who have been told since birth, that they are descendants

Of a country whose flag has always represented freedom

 

I am not that America

I am the America striving for the ultimate goal

Of an ending an era that has inhaled war

And exhaled the murders of a million men

That has breathed in the melting pot of cultures

And breathed out the rise and fall of humankind

 

It is a vicious circle

 

We are all born an American Flag

But not all are American made

And once we can begin to see the difference

Once we begin to accept the difference

We can begin again

Reviews

[Matt Artis]

Emily, this is a powerful piece. We have let our patriotism distract us from the atrocities we commit domestically, while screaming the rally cry of freedom. We have lost sight of what America means, what America is supposed to be. We need our sense of hope back. No one within these fifty states should fear what is around the corner based on religion, gender, race, or orientation. I applaud your work. Thank you for sharing this.