Kids are lighting fireworks

on the two streets that make a Horseshoe

where the Dallas county line breaks

off into anarachy; a word that looks like two lines of dirt

made by the same child’s hand.

Mrs. Peña’s kindergarten

class was just released an hour early

to jump the junkyard fence and make a phalanx

of Oldsmobile and El Dorado bumper/ hubcaps.

My Mexican Grandma, in the mint

shrub, is hiding with a Holy-Water Nerf gun,

bracing Sancho, the Pekinese with a sinus infection,

and the only creature that can smell Eyafjallajökull

smouldering high in the South of Iceland, in which molten

pebbles are ruing into giant Monsters.
The gas station attendant is handing out horoscopes

by the scoop-ful to willing truck drivers flooding

out the neighborhood. The rosewood Apartments

have all boarded up. The pecan trees are shaking. The

bicycles are turning. The kids are popping wheelies

in the park, where the drug dealers are making ends

meet. The cottonwood is sneezing over Metz Street into

the chasm of fresh laid asphalt, still steaming. A farm

Of illegal goats, and hens, and Santeria clinics are filling

up with immigrant families huddling over coffee

on flickering stoves…
Ash rises into a mushroom cloud, then settles

In the wake of 15 foot trolls with hammers

and spears. The tear up the flowers beds, they paint

the houses muddy, sienna, and sandpiper browns.

They put up foreclosure signs. The kindergarten class charges.

Sancho’s lone tinny bark can be heard in the distance.

The elementary school bells ring. A sea of dirty

Tired Cheeto, hot funyun, handball children

Mount their father’s pick up trucks and slam

into the front-line. Blood torrents into the air like geysers.

The phalanx is half-dashed into the playground. Trolls

with their milky eyes look over the heads of men

spotting little hope for pillaging,

and turn back around toward the North Sea