sixty-eight plain pine wood boxes
a big deep trench
a back-hoe
on a god awful hot august afternoon

some had family
but the family was
so poor
they could not afford to claim the bodies
some just plain had nobody

too old to live up stairs
they had to choose
open their first floor windows
and invite in
the street’s mayhem
or sit in quiet fear
with the windows
closed locked and covered
in motionless smothering air
air so hot that every single movement
soaked their clothes
each degree of heat factor
clouded their reason
they dehydrate
grow dizzy
fall and
slowly die
alone

some better part of all of us
was plowed under with

sixty-eight plain pine wood boxes
a big deep trench
a back-hoe
on a god awful hot august afternoon