One faraway Facebook friend 
I sort of hardly know
posts news of Cielo Vista in El Paso 
and asks, Where’s next?

After the Garlic Festival, the stalls
redolent with gunpowder
and the Creole buds that fry up like wine,
the Black garlic so sweet it could be cake,
  
we figured Walmart would be safe—
with the goods from China
we’ll swallow whole, no matter the tariff,
in our desire to have them cheaper and soon—

the baseball caps that almost fit
our giant American heads,
the tee shirts that will shrink 
to the size of placemats once they’re washed.

And the color TVs with the all-American names
like Sylvania, a light unto the nations,
and Emerson, reminding us of the self-reliance
we’re known to take a little far

like hunting alone, down the frozen food aisles, 
such bounty all ready for the microwave: Hot Sale, $59.99,
1200 Watts for any who come with cash. 
Border wall or no, we’ll take their bucks. 

This is his American Carnage, after all. 
Where’s next?  Dayton, we’re here—
and coming soon to a town near you.  
You had to be there, someone always used to say. 

Hey, you gotta be patient. 
The way we’re going, you will.

From our first day, we practiced 
the fire drill and the shelter drill
squatting in the hallway or beneath the desk
asses toward the windows
and never making a sound
till after the siren’s last moan. 
Later, the bomb-scare and then dispersal, 
kind of like on pep rally days, 
except no one stays around,
not even the ones with big heads and googly eyes.

I stayed long enough to see the intruder-drill
though this, being school, you could never call a thing
what it is—but the kids they knew: 
once they pushed the desks and chairs against the door
and someone comes by and bangs hard 
with his ring of keys.
His voice from the hallway calling, 
Let me in. Please, let me in. 

A girl in the corner begins to cry;
a boy in suspenders mumbles a prayer he knows by heart, 
and we know it’s the principal
from his plaintive sound
and the way he jangles his keys. 
The teacher says, You should never,
but her mouth makes no sound. 
And the girl whose eyes were blank
lets out a sob from inside her soul 
that rattles the clock at the front of the room,
the one that’s locked in a cage
and hasn’t worked since before most of us were born.