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Wednesday, November 04, 2020

AMERICA: SONNET FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

by Susan Barry-Schulz


 


How can you call yourself the Beautiful?

Land of the free. Home of the brave. How can 

you sing this land is your land, this land is

my land when it is not. How can you pledge 

allegiance to the flag, one nation, in-

divisible, then look the other way 

for three hundred years. How can you say 

we hold these truths to be self-evident 

when you do not. How can this be the land 

that you love, your home sweet home, and why 

now, would any one God choose to shed 

his grace on thee? America, America,

how many more times will I be asked 

to forgive you for showing me utterly who I am.



Susan Barry-Schulz is a licensed Physical Therapist. Her poetry has appeared in The Wild WordSWWIM, Shooter Literary Magazine, Barrelhouse online, South Florida Poetry JournalThe New Verse News, Panoply and elsewhere. She is a member of the Hudson Valley Writer's Center and lives in a lake neighborhood in Putnam County, NY with her husband and one or more of her 3 adult children. It all depends.