AMERICAN JUNIOR HIGH OR ON BEGINNING TO FIND A WAY

...one nation under God...

When I left the Church, I was in seventh grade.

I’d learned, for one, there were three popes at once;
for two, the papacy had been passed down
to lines of bastard sons; and three, about
the wars waged in His name, like the crusades,
the opposite of what His teachings were.

I started to become ridiculous,
maybe ridiculously serious, 
in a quiet way.

I had to forge my own, well, not beliefs,
but tenets, concepts I held to, would trust
enough to allow them, when in doubt,
to hold me. (I had learned some French by then,
tenir—to hold, and knew what tenets were.)
The old beliefs and faith had been exposed
as fickle friends, passed down, for the most part,
only for self-styled “Christians” to wage wars;
for Puritans to massacre and thieve;
my current country, not declaring war,
to turn into a murderer of masses
of freedom fighters throughout Indochina,
on college campuses, and on our streets.
I knew not what those tenets would become,
but knew what one could not possibly be:

So I never said the two words “under God”
aloud during the morning pledges of
allegiance. Something about separation
of state and church, but also, I would not
invoke His name to fuel a rabid fear
and rationalize the scourge of a regime.

The twelve-year-old I was, and thirteen, was
confused about a lot of things, and did
not know what to say—said nothing—but would
not use in vain the name of God, and risk
not just what may have been a blasphemy
but also what seemed at the time clearly
a blacker sacrilege—complicity.

One day Breonna saw what I was doing.
Or not doing. Not saying. Asked me. And
I told her. Three days later, she began
to do the same; we went to the same church.
Soon all the Catholics joined in, in the silence.
Then Trayvon noticed. Ditto, then, the Baptists.
Eric brought the Episcopalians. Michael,
the Congregationalists; George, the Lutherans.
By spring, the whole class stood in silence and
let Mr. Shepherd say the words himself.
All the words.
And some of us, O half I'd say, instead
of placing our right hand over our heart,
bowed our heads with our hands embraced, as in
a prayer for the country, rather than
a pledge to just an inert piece of cloth.

Now, one day Mr. Floyd the janitor
was in the hall and walked by just as we
were standing at our mixed attention. George
was his kid, and was in our class, so he
explained it all to his dad. Soon, not only
Mr. Floyd, but the whole custodial
staff stood in the hall outside our room for
our silent pledge. I noticed two or three
kneeling, even, sometimes on just one knee.
In a minute, it would be over, and we all
went about our day. For that minute, though,
we were as one, in truth and peace and hope—
and maybe a spot of integrity.
At least it felt that way, those last few months
of seventh grade. Not that it made a difference.

Nevertheless, I look back at that kid,
at all us kids, at what we have become,
what I’ve become, and can now say: the way
we were back then, the way I was, was something
else. Would that I were—we were—again.

James B. Nicola’s poems have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; and Barrow Street. His full-length collections (2014-2023) are Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists, Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond, Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies (just out). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. He has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice magazine award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and ten Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale, he hosts the Hell's Kitchen International Writers' Round Table at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins are always welcome.