Pledge of Allegiance by E.J. Koh

Pledge of Allegiance
E.J. Koh

I am the country of myself, liberty and justice
for all, and my country cannot apologize anymore.

When my mother tells me, under allegiance:

Be happy! When you smile happiness is chase you —
her language is a hand she lays on my head.

Time swings by the front of our lives and doesn’t undress itself,
will not bathe itself. You cannot pity a baby for which it cannot stand

one nation, under God. The type of people I am,
300 million times over.

I pledge to the flag just-wet with jet fuel
from the Hubblescope of the United States of America.

Read the news: Protestor dies from fumes of burning flag.
Pistachios undergo spontaneous combustion. The grenade

hand-made from YouTube comments to the Republic
for which it stands, Jurassic Park, under God,

indivisible. Pick one for all. God is 65 million years away.
Looking into a telescope at Earth,

he sees dinosaurs. We stare at Mayan temples
and they are giant loudspeakers.

MARGINALIA

1.
Sometimes I don’t know how to say what I feel in one language, let alone two. I try to translate myself, but something always falls through. My humour becomes hurt. My love sounds like a command.

2.
It’s hard to explain to anyone how language can be both a cradle and a weapon.

3.
Tell me what is it I inherited. Is it blood or country. Or is it the tone in my mother’s voice when she says be happy, as if joy were something you could chase down in the street and force to stay.

4.
Do you see how we absorb someone else’s hope because it’s the only thing they know how to give?

5.
Hand over heart. Right words in the right order. Eyes forward. Meanwhile, the ground is on fire.

6.
The language is combusting. The people around me are asking questions in a voice that sounds too much like mine.

7.
When you say I pledge do you mean I don’t know where else to go.