Flagpoor

The sound of a flag in wind is come here, come here, come here. The sight of Old Glory waving at the border. That’s how you know you’ve made it. The cages filled with miracles. Come here, come here, come here. Raise a flag. Hangdog it across a pickup’s crewcut. Does anyone believe that the moon belongs to anyone but the moon? Ask America what it owns and the answer is always all of it, all of what you see. Confederates number in the hundreds and convene at convenience stores to complain. That’s how you know you’ve made it. The sound of a flag in wind is mine, mine, mine. A flag, whipping its staff in the wind. Hand over heart. Sunrise, sunset. All that going up the pole gets the blood pumping, no? Ask America what it owns and the answer is always all of it, all of what you see. Superman is an alien, a refugee. At night, when he prays to whatever gods pray to, he is grateful for being bulletproof. The sound of a flag in wind is rifle. Fluid dynamics popping. In the driveway, a police sticker cockeyed on the window of the sedan, a football flag flying on the van. The flag snapping into the wind, mine, mine, mine.

Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the managing editor for The Broadkill Review. Whitaker is a teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer. His poems have appeared in Fourteen Hills, Oxford Poetry, The Scores, Crab Creek Review, & Third Wednesday, among other journals. He is the author of four chapbooks of poetry and a broadside from Broadsided Press. Mulch, his novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2020.