Snapping the Flag by Katelyn Wang (California, 17)

​I’ve always thought the American flag to be arrogant:
that there’s selfishness for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
slithering under its stripes and stars.
It demands we never kneel, dictating our flesh
to salute the service
of policing the Mexican border, demolishing Nagasaki, assailing Western trenches,
triumphantly.

---

​It seems aloof
raised half-way
on Memorial Day, September 11th, and at 500,000 COVID cases:
bowed down to declare American deaths while
branded on the sides of a metal aircraft
firing 500 pound bombs on women and children
huddled by a Syrian river bank.

I remember twirling an American flag
in Las Vegas on the Fourth of July, the flag
no longer than a Bible, pasted to a scrawny wooden stick.

I have never felt pride watching fireworks shatter into red-white-blue smiley-faces,
chanting the Star Spangled Banner, roaring God Bless the U.S.A
with my right fist clutching my shirt so tight
that sweat wrings out; unlike
the white man with a jutting eagle tattoo patched across his arm who did all three
while hurling his flag forward and back,
hollering through his beer-stained teeth.

The crowd’s hunger raged
as if there exists no sound blaring enough
to echo their allegiance to America, as if
there is no chant lengthy enough to march them across fields of slain soldiers,
no rifle brutish enough to snipe down all their enemies, no
wall noble enough to fortify their land, no
bomb heavy enough to decimate other civilians
for Americans.

I shook my flag, snapping
the wooden part by surprise.
The stars and stripes sunk into mud,
surrendering
those ferocious desires.

​The flag crumpled
alongside the bare bones of patriots buried beneath.
Its stripes fatigued by the ego of war, whispering
the national anthem. The flag failed
as a shield, a declaration, a gunman. When packing for home,
I imagined my flag jammed into the dirt of my garden;
so I snapped it,
the wooden part, again,
so it could fit
in my suitcase.