Corona Avenue

for Ruben

The world ends in the morning
The cow-hide shape of the city
crawling back into the sea.

We kneel—and where is The Little?
We don’t know
we won’t know either,
her fox’s eyes lost in a heist
the earth come to swallow naughty children.

Let us count virtues and absent parents
third grade and thank god for holy communion.
When the ground stops shaking we don’t go to school—
all of us spared from Hell And High Water.