The Weather is dull, all Flora, withered—
Into Poetry’s ruins snakes have slithered;
Customs forgotten, sick mammals slain.
Now vampires infect me: porn on the brain…

While Disney exports multicultural trash
The vatos and thugs burn the barrio to ash.
Yet my lovely muse lifts me above the crisis:
Revealing conspiracy as rational analysis;
In her shimmering shroud, she defies the fates.
My hometown nostalgia out-bunkers Bill Gates;
I look out my window. Joy turns to mass death:
Old love-letters blown on Corona-breath.

I hide unicorn carcasses from my daughter.
Instead, we read Exodus: angels, plagues, slaughter.
She’s too young to know what is sold in the street
Or whether Hondurans arrive on their feet
And if what they carry is bitter or sweet . . .
Our online Amazon: jungle or obituary?
Webster just shrugs. It’s not in his dictionary.

PROMPT #26:
fill out the following Almanac Questionnaire.
Use your responses as the basis for a poem.

Weather: dull
Flora: withered
Architecture: ruins
Customs: forgotten
Mammals/reptiles/fish: snakes and pangolins
Childhood dream: Dracula
Found on the Street: porn mags
Export: Disney
Graffiti: Chicano gangs
Lover: my muse
Conspiracy: rational analysis
Dress: shroud
Hometown memory: nostalgia
Notable person: BIll Gates
Outside your window, you find: joy
Today’s news headline: mass death
Scrap from a letter: thrown out
Animal from a myth: unicorn
Story read to children at night: Exodus
Walk three minutes down an alley and find: heroin
You walk to the border and hear: scheming Hondurans
What you fear: consumerism
Picture on your city’s postcard: Noah Webster