What Did You Expect?

Jeffrey L. Taylor

November 12, 2023

You bragged about how beautiful
your state was. They believed you.
Death was a constant threat
where they lived, lurking around the edges
along the way. A better future beckoned.
The hostile landscapes were less threatening
than the gangs and the inhabitants
at home or on the way.

Another exodus through the desert.
Another promised land.
Whose journey do we applaud?
Where’s the beauty?

Jeffrey L. Taylor is a retired Software Engineer.  Around 1990, poems started holding his sleep hostage.  He has been published in The Perch, California Quarterly, Texas Poetry Calendar, and Texas Poetry Assignment.