We are
floating
on
a very
thin
raft,
myself included.
I am mostly
talking
about
white people
I know.
Though 300,000
Cubans
crossed
the border
this year.
Some
on rafts,
but mostly
on foot.
Poverty
so extreme
a family
I became
close to
insisted
I purchase
their teenage niece.
They cried
when I said
no.
There is no
way
a functional
human
intelligence
can grapple
with
the horrors
of the twentieth century.
The 21st
century
looks
worse.
A person
smarter
than me
said
There is fire,
water,
and the atomic bomb.
We’ll see.
I wept
when I saw
a photo
of my mother
riding
her bike
to school
in the small
town
of
her birth.
Author: Caine O'Rear
Caine O'Rear is a writer and editor based in Mobile, Alabama. He is the former editor in chief of American Songwriter Magazine. Follow him at www.instagram.com/caineorear.
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Caine O'Rear 