Hot July

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And then we were all put in boxes…

(except for a couple wandering rebels who smoked hand-rolled cigarretes out of their mom’s Subarus and careened through the streets like charged-up billiard balls)

Hot July

The hotter July gets,

(Its feverishly sizzling with old men-leaders and invisible terrors)

     – the more we have to open our windows to let “breeze” in.

Its a greenhouse in here,

     with moist windows.

We’re breathing cotton-mouthed cactus breath.

The outside air is sweating with over-boiled tension.

July is hotter than ever

             and we open our windows for air.

East Palo Alto

Police vans swarm

     like frontline combat jeeps and maggots,

when a firecracker,

     half the size of a pea,

is thrown onto the silky new asphalts streets,

     by a group of teenage boys

         stooped on the curb by their mama’s Mercedez Benz.

Whatsapp and Nextdoor chats ignite

     and start to buzz,

   in the rugged streets of East Palo Alto,

     “the Kabul of Silicon Valley.”

Image: Landscape with Cacti 1 by Diego Rivera, 1931. Oil on canvas.