America Howl, or Why Would Greenland Join the USA?

America Howl, or Why Would Greenland Join the USA?
O America, star-spangled hungry mouth,
BLOATED & GASPING & PROMISING,
waves of blue-lit supermarkets & credit reports
& big men sweating in the boardrooms,
neckties pulled tight like execution knots—

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by U.S. Department of State, https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/pdm/

Мюнхенская конференция

Why would Greenland join your empire of sirens,
your advertisement-prison,
your waving flags stuffed in the mouths of the poor?
Greenland dreams in the hush of ice,
while America dreams of conquest—another market,
another military base, another billboard screaming
FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM while the factory belts tighten,
while the mortgage drowns the single mother,
while the old man dies waiting for insulin.

O Denmark, cold-blooded Viking kindness!
Your hospitals humming like lullabies,
your prisons empty as an honest man's heart,
your classrooms unlocked, libraries thick with wisdom,
your hands held out with parental leave,
while America swaddles its newborns in debt & despair,
a nation of colic & credit card interest.

What fool would trade Hans Christian Andersen for a tax audit?
What mother would trade twelve months of love for twelve weeks of fear?
What child would trade a long, warm life for the fast food grease of a shortened one?

Greenland listens to the ice crack,
the future whispers with melting glaciers—
Will she be swallowed by America,
or will she float free, an island of reason
adrift from the wreckage of a star-spangled wreck?

Nancy O'Brien Simpson