Allegiance — Blackbird Archive

← v14n2, Fall 2015

I knew my father’s voice could take me down

an inch, his look another, my nation deep

into the basement where we prepared to live.

My father asked forgiveness now and then.

But my nation, what was that, and who.

Drop, my teacher said, when we were praised

for being small. If only I were smaller.

Zero minus zero. It made as much sense

as killing the dead, but we learned the answer

that day in October. We learned one nation

under God made God still smaller too.

Who then was it over the Russian children.

Us. Or God minus God, the zero in

his name opening our mouths to speak,

to release a little balloon of air

that dwindled into nothing as it flew.

childhood war religion

Bruce Bond

Bruce Bond is the author of three forthcoming books: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Press), which won the 17th Annual Elixir Book Prize, Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). He is the author of eighteen published books including Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017); Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015 (Louisiana State University, 2017), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award; Black Anthem (University of Tampa Press, 2016), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry; Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), which won the Helen C. Smith and Crab Orchard Awards; and Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He is Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.