New Life Pt. 1

I keep a gun in the glove box
for times like these.

Times like in the movies,
these aren't the droids you're looking for,
and closing in on
"Welcome to the United States of America!"

I remember the songs my mother
sang in the doorway
of our falling-down house,
a home where
we cooked in the front lawn.

I remember the chickens running down the road,
if you could call our strip of
dry, cracked earth
a road, so elaborate to think,
in our village,
a road.

To where?
Out, they told me
in the stories I was told,
and I knew my father
was a migrant worker,
sending us letters
about the bounty of lettuce
and tomatoes.
He told us sometimes
he cried for the things
he couldn't send to us.
Living in a tent
of the bed of a rusted out
pick-up.

The summer dust blew up 
one year,
and father's letters had stopped,
our the mail had forgotten us,
I never knew.

In the night,
from the shadows came
what was only whispered in the daytime,
suicido 
her dangling,
dirty feet.
The earthen walls
fell in that day.

I learned to keep a gun.
Keep out the sadness,
and protect my brothers.