Self-Portrait With No Flag i pledge allegiance to my homies to my mother’s small & cool palms to the gap between my brother’s two front teeth & to my grandmother’s good brown hands good strong brown hands gathering my bare feet in her lap i pledge allegiance to the group text i pledge allegiance to laughter & to all the boys i have a crush on i pledge allegiance to my spearmint plant to my split ends to my grandfather’s brain & gray left eye i come from two failed countries & i give them back i pledge allegiance to no land no border cut by force to draw blood i pledge allegiance to no government no collection of white men carving up the map with their pens i choose the table at the waffle house with all my loved ones crowded into the booth i choose the shining dark of our faces through a thin sheet of smoke glowing dark of our faces slick under layers of sweat i choose the world we make with our living refusing to be unmade by what surrounds us i choose us gathered at the lakeside the light glinting off the water & our laughing teeth & along the living dark of our hair & this is my only country - by Safia Elhillo
This is a small poetry club that started as a poetry email exchange between two friends. Our goal is to read a poem everyday, and this blog is one way to help keep us accountable. There is only one valid rule in poetry club: there are no rules in poetry club. Read any poem, in any order, with any or no interactions. You decide. We only suggest you read poetry!
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I'd pledge allegiance to a land. If fac it'd be nice if more people pledged an allegiance to the land. Nations or governments are corrupted by people, so is land, but the land doesn't have an agenda to gain power or wealth. Maybe if our nation and government protected our land better we might be worth pledging an allegiance.
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