I’m not proud to be an american

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    she said, in that way one speaks
    to get a reaction, or the way I titled
    this poem so you’d keep reading.
    I’m not proud, she said, because I
    had nothing to do with it,

    deftly putting patriotism in
    a new light, a search light, under
    the bare bulb of interrogation.

    What, then, can I be? Thankful:
    that I was born in a South Texas
    town named for the Body of Christ
    and not Port-au-Prince; pride,
    perhaps, would be easier

    because it requires nothing
    of me. Gratitude guides me to
    share what was never mine.

    Peace,
    Milton

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