I Sing the Songs of My Country, January 6, 2021

Paul Juhasz

February 4, 2021

My country tis of thee,

Death knell of liberty,

For thee I weep.

Land where the Constitution died

To satisfy a despot’s pride,

From every column’s side,

There, gunshots ring.

Stop. Sorry. That doesn’t sound right.

Let me try again.

O Beautiful for mendacious lies,

For the shimmer of tear-gas reign,

For purple-bruised travesties,

Along the Lafayette Square plain,

America, America,

MAGA bled his rage on thee,

He crowned himself in tyannthood,

From sea to shining sea.

Stop. Wait. I think I have that one wrong, too. 

Let me try once more.

God help America

Land they think they love.

Stand astride her,

And deride her,

With a fight based on no right beyond a shove.

Shit. I just can’t seem to get this right today.

How about this:

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America,

To beat the cops with the same,

Zip ties and body armor, a ghastly game,

With liberty and justice for none.

Fuck!

I’ve been singing these songs for so many years,

Blanketed by the din of patriotic white noise,

That I never paid attention to the words,

Until today.

A graduate of the Red Earth MFA program, Paul Juhasz’s work has appeared in bioStories, Red River Review, Concho River Review, Dragon Poet Review, Voices de la Luna, and Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way. His mock journal, Fulfillment: Diary of a Warehouse Picker, chronicling his seven-month term as a Picker at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, was published by Fine Dog Press in 2020.