barker [14]

i pledge allegiance to the flag
snapping the monster truck wind
and to the united
muzaks’ infinite sousurra
of stars and stripes forever
baby
my capitulation
no longer kaput
as i can’t
but march
with the red white and blue ant-cult
whose cubical instinct parades
the do-ragged ‘merican
wound

i pledge allegiance to the star-spangled
commodity
flying me to the moon
that still licks new york new york
to pall
wall-streets i can’t scale
even wearing my stripes
(forever baby)
and ant cape
walls i can trope but not hop
or skip or spit
past with patriotic
gall out of the gut
of an economic cripple

i pledge allegiance to the jewel
of this jocose joyland
this blockbuster of cape and muscle
always surfeited in liebestod
like a fly
drowning in sugared shit
that don’t stink
the best barn-
um sugared tit
so fragrant like paris
hilton’s influencer cleavage is
the coke-line canal to insta-
adoration

i pledge allegiance to
that gall no heimlich expels
no blackness can further
pitch and now i want
out of an elders’ circle
the doom
of ford tough
and man-
witch with whip and belt
to cat-o-tails me when i fail
to register or
resonate
anywhere
as i crouch outside
in the iDouche ragpicker
hole
hot and wet under walls scintillate with the pallid promise
of one lollipop lick
from the moon’s red white and blue bomb-
pop

Tim McCoy holds an MFA from Syracuse University. He has had pieces published in Interim, Ekphrasis, Stone Canoe, and other places. He teaches composition at two colleges in the Syracuse area.