“My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (arranged for Brazen Bull)
A Greek device used to torture . . . the Brazen Bull
had an acoustic setup that converted human screams into
the sound of a bull . . . [through] a complex system of tubes and stops
— Medieval Chronicles
Bellow and bellicose and the men and the man’s crying
on the stand red-faced arrogant even in distress are furnacing
hot new foundries in the news melting the metals they have
always melted and women are singing in the burning bronze
and also and also me and the time I was six and twenty and twelve and forty
and I believe and of thee I sing of the scared-into and the clamped-quiet
woods of shame bottle shatter and condoms’ spent fireworks’
rocket-red glare in another song that is not the song the women
sing in the key of keys-spiked-from-fists for the last three blocks and the dream
of another door sweet land of liberty of thee of me in the burning
beast where whoever stokes the fire and turns the knob
is righteous is the liberty bell’s hard shell in the land of our fathers
our fathers our fathers the clapper of the women’s laced boots
the women’s high heels the women’s bare feet that do not sound like bells
from inside that do not sound like singing but the snorting
of ancient pipes to the tubes to the sky of I don’t believe and she was paid
and she wants she only she sweet sweet land sweet lamb
of a girl in the quiet that was never quiet in the prolonged burning
of the woods and the rills that is just a pretty word for a stream
where a girl should take off her clothes and the bull will come the bear
will come in his suit of a beast and will be a prince inside so the girl should
kneel to be pawed to be eaten to believe he is who he says he is
and she should love him when he takes his fur off and her mortal
tongue should wake to sing as it melts of the pilgrims’ pride that she’s saved
for him in the templed hills of the dark bronze body that is not
her body closed and cast into a form around her where she cries and it bellows
Great God our king and our fathers’ God to thee and thee and let
freedom ring through its nose and its breath and the piped-to-silence
steam of her voice hot enough inside to break the rocks.
Alexandra Teague is the author of Or What We’ll Call Desire (Persea, 2019), The Wise and Foolish Builders, and Mortal Geography, as well as the novel The Principles Behind Flotation. She is also co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Alexandra teaches in the MFA program at University of Idaho and is currently on sabbatical in Wales.Header photo by Olga_i, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Alexandra Teague by Dylan Champagne.
