Tuesday, July 15th
I returned home from Olympic Valley last night, after a week of reading little else other than prose devoted to memoir, hungry to read some poetry. While stacking several boxes of books I am setting aside as a small portion of what I hope to give to the CSULB library, in 2025, I happened to spot S.A. Griffin’s collection, PANDEMIC SOUL MUSIC (Punk Hostage Press, 2023); one of the poems, “The Pledge of Aggrievance,” struck me as summing up the mood of many of us who are despondent about the undeclared civil war that may well have just experienced its Fort Sumpter moment. Let us hope that we, as a nation, can pull back from the precipice.
“THE PLEDGE OF AGGRIEVANCE”
I pledge aggrievance
to the flag
of the United States of Reality Show
and to the profit margin
for which it stands
on one knee
under siege
invisible and divided
with no civil liberty
or justice
we fall
— S.A. Griffin
(Copyright 2023 by S.A. Griffin; reprinted by permission)
Photograph by Bill Mohr
(c) Bill Mohr
About Bill Mohr