From Here to Hialeah

Walking in the sun during drought fit to make
Florida the Brick State,
chunks of gravel cake in the
soles of my rubbery thongs.

Passing a bleached yellow shack,
I inhale the acrid stench of sun-baked bacon.
Tasting the rot on my tongue...
I could have cooked the meat on my forearm.

So what's on tap for this
dying neighborhood?
More of the same: grass crunching underfoot
and clarion calls for bootlegs.
Five bucks a pop for cheap 'hood entertainment.

Dragging myself further, my hand
scrapes the walls of an old repair shop.
Paint clings to my fingertips, turning to chalkdust
in my sweat-ravaged hands, greasy and grubby.
Where the hell can I get some water?

On the left is a store-prison covered in iron bars.
Broken bottles litter the parking lot.
Earthquake bass rumbles under the street.

On the right, it's much the same
but with an argument in three languages:
Spanish, English, Arabic.
Gaze closer, and fists fly.
I see a man reach in his pocket.

There are three children leaving a city bus,
headed for the store to scrounge up some candy.
I lurch, sprinting to them just as
a gunshot rings down the road.

Blink my eyes and find the seal-hued girl
face first on the ground.
I touch her, feeling her dry, cool hide.
Scrambling for my cell phone with clammy hands,
all I can do is kneel in her blood.

When I return to the embrace of my sandpaper sheets,
I flip on the news and get an earful of a Hialeah shooting spree.
The anchor hurls saccharine in my ears. I wince upon thinking
how I felt that spree, a far cry from the county's golden shores.