Adapted from Caracas Journal
A 45-Story Walkup Beckons the Desperate
Vertical squalor, pillar of poverty
How many families squat on your unfinished floors?
Rooms without heat, hallways without light,
Windows without glass,
Balconies without guardrails
How many children have fallen from your great heights?
Dios decide cuándo entramos en su reino
“God decides when we enter his kingdom,”
Bodegas alight each floor of the half-built sky scraper
Selling plantains, cigarettes, Frescolita
Merengue blares from
Brisk businesses of beauty parlors, dentists, and seamstresses
Hope’s high-rise
Priceless views for the dispossessed
In the distance, El Avela rises from the fog
minarets of mosques and church steeples punctuate the air,
while tin -roofed shacks of El Patare cover the unforgiving land
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