showroom dummies

three of the elementary schools I went to
in Chicago
were built to the same model
some industrialized European
1800s
Brick and gravel

full of a million greens and browns
eternally stretching hallways that
gave the corresponding ghosts a run for their money

cardboard
posts
lifting black pioneers
like Shirley Chisholm that they’d never teech you about in texts
but you could fatten up on with
a wandering eye and a slow pace

the lockers were copper
to green to
beige
with rust to match the playground

and rumored
bomb shelters
glowing furnacerooms
and teacherslounges
full of booze

the Garbage Pail stickers have peeled off the lockers at Stone Academy
the tape that held up untold genereations
of boy bands and pop stars
have torn and yellowed
like everything else

this year
they have bullet holes and kabbalah tattoos the
population has shifted from black and Korean
to Hispanic and Pakistani

are they still ripping open cardboard boxes and
doing headspins
at
Franklin and Field
?

does Mrs. Fountaine
still talk about Jesus
and lecture Manic Panic headed boys
about self respect
?

do they still have nothing better to play in the computer lab
than
Oregon Trail . Math Blaster . and Arkanoid

are boys like me still
sifting through glass and syringes
blacked lighters and butts and bottle rockets
for nails and screws for
the
robots
they think they can build
?

is there a boy like me
in sweat pants
and a t-shirt ordered from a cereal box
that has to leave the room
to go to LD class
?

does every head turn
every time
to watch him do it
?

does the hallway still smell of French Roast coffee and mimeograph

Are there still smokes hidden in the field between Decatur Classical and the old folks’ home?

is Mr. O’conner dead yet?

did bald Mister Jones cut his beard yet?

did Franklin cut its music program yet?

are the Latin classes dead yet?

with the whole country overweight is it ok to be the fat kid now?


Maybe it’s all a ghost
in the sense of some
Ultraviolet finferprint
and
none of it is dead
Amy Cross and Claudia and Alia Rajput and Jane Quach and Yolanda
are still the most beautiful things to ever have their teeth lit up
by a ray of the sun

there’s still jive talk and menthol breath
under the hair nets in the kitchen
where they hand out your tray and lunch
(after the truck drops em off)
as you
single-file
to the
cafetorium

they’re still
maneuvering
frozen
granite inclines
on cardboard
sleds

the backs
of
green bus seats
are still riddled with
. 2
Pencil holes

And

ten years past
it’s all still
inked
on my permanent records