Murder hornets mutter in the peeling eaves
Where flags of no known nation hang.
Mom and Dad are never coming home from work,
They’ve thrown away their burner phones.

“It’s heritage, not hate,” their son lectures the cops.
“Everything but the furniture is original.”
Their daughter watches her own arrest on TV,
The cable dish pings endless conspiracy.

It seems all their dreams turn to virus.
Knees kneel on each bedroom’s warped floor,
Faces pray in an Old Testament rictus.
Mongrels mount each other in the driveway.

Just ask the Founding Fathers: it began with gunplay,
Ducked and covered through centuries of phobia
To the post-Truth you can’t teach in school:
A car on blocks, guarding a Victorian mansion.

(First published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2024. Thanks to editor Eric Evans.)