fading flag

Dante de Jong, United States

part I.

the principal, with a voice

flat as sidewalk pavement

recites the pledge of allegiance

to the flag on the back wall

it hangs low, in maroon, gray,

and whatever shade the sky is

at the end of a long day

most don’t stand up anymore,

not since we learned we didn’t have to—

a right the constitution affords

this class of silent cynics.

a few students still stand

the sound of scraping chairs

is the only noise in our homeroom

as they turn to face that faded flag

hands to their hearts, eyes trained

while they watch the flag, we watch them—

how do they believe in one nation

under god, indivisible? do they see

a different flag? are the colors

brighter? does their red recall brave sacrifice,

blood soaking the land of the free?

does their white shimmer spotless

in the dawn’s early light? is their blue

deep as the nation’s shining seas?

we squint at that fading flag, and wonder:

for what exactly do they stand?

the intercom crackles as the pledge ends

leaving us split between silence and allegiance

with the flag just hanging in there.

part II.

the principal, with a voice

flat as sidewalk pavement

recites the pledge of allegiance

to the flag on the back wall

it hangs low, in maroon, gray,

and whatever shade the sky is

at the end of a long day

most don’t stand up anymore,

not since we learned we didn’t have to—

a right the constitution affords

this class of silent cynics

a few students still stand

the sound of scraping chairs

is the only noise in our homeroom

as they turn to face that faded flag

hands to their hearts, eyes trained

while they watch the flag, we watch them—

how do they believe in one nation

under god, indivisible? do they see

a different flag? are the colors

brighter? does their red recall brave sacrifice,

blood soaking the land of the free?

does their white shimmer spotless

in the dawn’s early light? is their blue

deep as the nation ’s shining seas?

we squint at that fading flag, and wonder:

for what exactly do they stand?

the intercom crackles as the pledge ends

leaving us split between silence and allegiance

with the flag just hanging in there.

Previously Published in the Belmont Highpoint

Dante de Jong is a young poet and photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. An alumnus of Bard College's Young Writers Workshop, her work has previously been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and is published or forthcoming in Bridge Ink, Let's Say Gay, and Blue Marble Review, among others. When she isn't scribbling down poems in her notebook, she's scribbling them down in the margins of her algebra homework.