her blue eyes

her always-open mouth

which was busy babbling

cooing

sucking

crying

and a great anger rose up in me.

Didn't he love his own little girl?

Why didn't he fix this mess?

I had the TV on night and day

waiting

watching

for the scream of bombs

that would take away from me

my babies

their future

the fabric of my life.

Fidel Castro

Guantanamo Bay

armed aggression

attack on Cuba

the danger of starting a nuclear war

by miscalculation.

What kinds of words were these

to be in my living room

where the sun shone through the jalousied windows

and my baby boy played with his trucks on the floor

and my baby girl reached for the mobile above her bassinet?

Larry thought I was crazy

because I even slept on the couch

so as not to miss it when Fidel attacked us

so that I could run with my babies

to the nearest bomb shelter.

I didn't want my little ones to die.

I didn't want them to have radiation sickness

or have their skin eaten away by nuclear fallout.

Paula said I was like a mother tiger

willing to kill for her cubs

but she admitted that she felt a lot of anger, too

at the President

Castro

the Russians

and everybody who made us feel so helpless.

But after a while

I had to get a grip on myself

and sit down at the kitchen table

with a scrap of paper and a pen

and make out the grocery shopping list

because so far no bombs had dropped

and we had to eat.

Music Playing: Hush Little Baby
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