America Poem by MARINA GIPPS

Not sure what it means to be an American anymore.
My two older sisters, naturalized as my parents are.
Their names engraved on an Ellis Island wall
Where immigrants bled from past atrocities.
Not sure what it means to be an American anymore.
I kiss the flag then I kiss the ground where lepers weep.
Counting back to what seems a century that i should keep.
Instead,
Not sure where I am nor where I am going.
America, are you taking me with you
Or
Are you really leaving me behind?
A spy-less lover, an abandoned confidante
Of altered states kindling in a pyre
Of burnt hopes
Where i am singed and voiceless,
Breath gone with the ammunition of defeat,
Hung to dry as a white flag of surrender
Trailing behind china with its tattered parachute.
America, my America, I love you
And yet you do not love me back.