This is a poem I'm workshopping tomorrow.  Some of the text is taken from a children's book, How Deserts Are Made.  It's a pseudo found text piece, because I added a lot of my own words.
 
How Deserts Are Made 
  
  
My family lives in a desert house. 
There is never enough milk 
at the breakfast table. 
  
The desert poppy has adapted to live 
without much.  After a storm it bursts 
into red flower and dies.  
  
Weather changes the landscape. 
Grains of sand blown by the wind carve 
the red rock into pillars. These change 
shape as the wind changes direction.  
  
My father changes into someone else 
every morning. Coral snakes 
drape themselves on his tie rack. 
  
All desert animals must be able to live 
with very little.  I hear Gila Monsters 
shift under my bed. I stop sleeping 
in the bottom bunk. 
  
My mother is silent for days. 
She serves bowls of sand for dinner.  
She often disappears in the shadows under the porch. 
  
The kit fox yips outside my window at night.  
He sings blue shoe, blue shoe, blue shoe. 
It is a sad sound.  I often wish I could see 
the moon but my father says he hides it. 
  
A man can survive for a week in the desert 
if he knows what to do. 
  
There are beautiful things here, things that 
sting and run away. 
  
I sit on the lawn at noon and watch 
the scorpions gather stones. 
They are building a fence around us. 
  
They need protection. 
  
I’ve lived twelve years, 
never tasted water.
 
 
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