School

Gross, grey lunches.
Vegetables, sitting happily
in chairs like dead bugs.
Not moving, not thinking.

A young couple in matching
hot pink outfits, sloppily kissing
each other in the corridor
like two dogs warmly welcoming home
their master.

Teachers moving rigidly
around their four-walled
circus tents.

Banana boats pulling up
to the front gate,
but some climb over the rusted and bloodied
razor wire.

White spitballs soaring high
above the fluorescent clouds
like WWII bombers in
attack formation.

Down in the lab.
Future physicists
experimenting with the extraordinary
properties of
gas.
A fireball of laughter
scorches the knuckle hairs.

A tiny, subhuman twelve-year-old
plunked down in the
bad office with the
bad man
for lighting a trash can
aflame in the
boys' latrine.

by G. M., Wheelwright, MA