The City Outside My Ear

A Minnesota poet
who writes in a plethora of ice
asks me what the shape
of a poem written in the hot dust
of the valley would look
and sound like. I tell him
it is all dust, even in the city
outside my ear—
my bedroom window rattling
when gunshots pop, when the cops
in metallic cars screech through
barrio streets, when a miniature man
is swallowed by the lake of shadows
and the streaming lights of the helicopter
night.