We Decide What Standard to Bear:
A Flag Poem for Minneapolis in June 2026
Sun Yung Shin 

“What did we learn? Reflections on the ICE surge and the/your body/the collective response”.
This is a very open invitation; take it where and how you will.
Or don’t. If something else compels you, that’s fine.

*There is a word for the study 
of flags—their history, 
symbols, use: vexillology; 
from vexillum, carried by cavalry—
a coarse cloth, Roman, 
dyed red as if Mars’ rusted red, 
the same iron in our blood, 
was broken off from the Earth’s 
night sky, but not planet:
linen, made fine from the ancient 
flax plant—and spinning, spooling, 
weaving. So much 
women’s work: a flag, 
originally a standard to be carried 
in battle, a warning bent 
into the barbarian wind. 

Dreams of dominion travel like smoke 
inside an empire, even loyal citizens
might not notice a new border encroaching 
like bad weather. No, like an assassin. 

And sometimes a flag approaches 
like simile, or even a summer storm, 
uncanny, shadowless. 

Are we here to bind and banish 
curses—to instead cast 
spells that name true, 
to break what enslaves us 
from the outside, 
and from the inside. 

As above, so below. 
Perhaps we vow to un-border, 
un-czar, 
un-disappear. 

We the living. 
Recovery, revision. 
Rest & rhythm. 
Our lives in this place are music, 
but what kind? 

Work: 
Let no weapon prosper. 
Let us not allow unfinished 
dreams fall into disrepair. 
Repair is also an art,
space between and under 
the big notes. 

Here we are together
in this school of grass & gather;
from far above, we might appear
as stars, mobile constellations, 
small beings glittering 
with gravity & grief. 

Back to the study of flags. 
Here, no soldiering today, 
no vexillum of conquest. 
No banner, blood, betrayal. 
Only the government of poetry, 
oracle, prophecy, prayer. 
Only ephemeral flags made of words,
the sound of reaching for another, 
and another, and another.
To recognize our inheritances, our wounded, 
brutal, brittle, bewildering humanity. 

This blue realm of clouded wonders, 
a wealth we could imagine
not squandering, not foreclosing. 
But these light-eating trees
remind us, for free, 
to be annual, 
to be water and sun. 
To inhale the world  
as if we were a green multitude, 
our leaf-flags unfurling toward 
everything, the only border 
mortality, or the gift of meaning. 

The trees bring me to belief, 
a way to bear our own flag— 
it is not square, it doesn’t turn 
corners, it does not float 
ragged above a battlefield, 
but it could be this moment, 
a signal to draw toward, 
a rippling field of memory, 
life, our city, the built and unbuilt, 
these way stations where we meet, 
we all belong here
in the wondrous unfolding realms, 
in the lonely, lovely, 
haunted rooms of language.
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 *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexillum