You would never say it out loud,

But you think me second best.

You shine, red and white

Above Olympics and World Cups,

And in every Christmas and Independence Day memory.

I wait in the shadowy corridors,

In combination Pizza Hut-KFCs

Among traumatized veterans and the forgotten

Children of inner cities;

Among all for whom the promise of fairness in America

Was never really true;

Among those who awoke from dreams to find only

Wrought iron gates shuttering the bank tellers' windows.

*

Nobody ever asks for me.

Am I okay, instead of you, the waitress will ask.

You have declared yourself Friendship

And Love and the Heart of America

On billboards, shining in pickup truck headlights

And in so many mi do re mi dos

Wedged between sitcoms about family

And a superhero's triumph over tyranny

Or the coronation of a clarion-voiced singer

Declared our new Sweetheart.

It costs me millions to have a Britney or Beyonce

Stand beside me,

And never at the zenith of their fame.

I have sent skinny girls in denim shorts onto hot summer sidewalks

To set us beside each other like suspects lined up before an eyewitness

To prove it isn't taste.

To prove it was never taste.

But it is your shape or associations or nuances

Like Mozart or Jordan that set you above me.

Above me always.

*

America has sided with you and not me,

So I no longer side with America.

I will be the Siberian wolf that kills polar bears and eagles

When they are not watching.

*

You are no freely chosen Senator;

You are a Tsar who has barricaded himself

In a Winter Palace,

Who must be dragged out onto the street,

Who will have his crown stripped by the oppressed,

No longer subjects but Subjects.

I will join with those who have waged this fight before,

Who have already traced your bumpy hourglass silhouette

In the false, rotten core of capitalism.

*

In the cafes on Tverskaya Street

They already ask for me first, you know.

Soon I will see my name rise in glowing Cyrillic

Over Pennsylvania Avenue and Fenway Park.