The Star-Spangled Kingdom - by Nadia Loera

A child cries to his mother in despair.
The hunger becomes more intense with everyday.
Mom ignores the problem — as if it wasn’t there.
Calming her children, she gives them her plate.
She says, “I’m not hungry anyway.”

“The bills add up; our house is up for closure.”
says a father, unemployed,
with his heart in his hands
and a defeated,
crumbled,
posture.

“Farewell, my friends. Someday, I’ll see you again.”
says a high school student
whose parents were taken away.
To México, to México.
Migrating again — from a land that promised equality
and, to “the poor and tired,” relief and aid.

I am part of a community;
she vulnerably stands.
Where thousands of people refuse to be
suppressed and oppressed.
Fleeing a country where politics have corrupted,
a country that gave away the honor that once was founded.
One that is run by the “peso.”
Without welfare,
a lot of people die por eso.

But only one man gets to rule, sit and eat from the
White Throne.
If I were He,
I would never leave my people alone.

The American dream,
one principle that along Freedom became an ideal,
so the United States could be founded and offer a New Deal.
But the right to be called after the American continent,
the “American” name,
was never given to Ethnic Foreigners.
The same Ethnic Foreigners that along with other races are denied, repealed, and shunned from the so called
“American dream.”
The dream that belongs to America.
The rest of the American continent
whose recognition was never achieved.

That Republican, his face like a pig,
he causes disputes, disaster and deceit.
All he thinks about is separating races and
creating laws of no use.
Like a Slave owner in the South;
Duplicitous, he devalues a race and
chains their value as if the empire of slavery
still ruled.

If I were King,
the King of the White Throne,
I’d punish the officials who stand for false,
disdainful words.
I would be the Grim Reaper
that decides who should continue in office
or not.

I’d change the systems that make
schools similar to jails.
We number the Convict,
we lock the bars to the student crowd.
“You can’t think, unless you follow the rules in the book,
You can’t speak, unless you’re directed so.”
“Your Honour, may I please have extra credit?
My future is failing!”
We might as well call expulsion an alternative for a
student’s sentence of death parole.

If I were sitting on that golden, White Throne,
I’d listen to my people and
forget the flag that stands covered
in innocent blood.
The flag that hides the true issues from the world,
The flag that denies people suffer from
Hunger, Loss, and living, Oh, so poor.

If I were He,
Him, on the White Throne,
I’d be called a president
in a big, White Home.
Surrounded by an ignorant system
shutting all my people’s hope.
The hope of having a better life
for their children and
their loved.