I’m not proud to be an american

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