Hot all night and no one can sleep.
I see neighbors on their porches
panting wolf-like at the moon.
It’s even too hot to try a walk.
It’s 1978, air conditioning exists
but not in our ghetto neighborhood.
Here box fans disrupt the air like spoons
stirring boiling water in cast iron pots.
An argument in one house fizzles,
shakes the screen door of another.
This pattern repeats itself
like lights blinking off and on.
Even women are drinking beer.
Mom looks at you with eyes
as dry, sharp, and green as a cactus.
When you say nothing, your father
tells you to shut your fucking mouth.
You’re nine but know what this means.
It’s a good time to hide, find cool
in shadows, because come morning
some kid in some crevice the city
will be dead, head crushed,
brain matter broiling on pavement.
Better your tiny bedroom closet,
spritzing yourself with a spray bottle.
Better to lie with the mess under your bed
or sit with bees who built a hive
in a concrete wall under the pool deck.
The world won’t stay hot forever,
but until then you need to lay low,
like any seasoned criminal on the run.