The Desert

in the cafeteria overfish sticks, canned corn and chocolate milk the teachers mulled over their school

the din of the hallways deafening the squalor -profound the brick and the stone vibrated and the waves cracked the building and spread through the barren side streets

the school piled its textbooks high society layered in ink and paper into inventory

the school year ending in June and for months and years they traveled in the halls in the broken streets after so much time resigned to the iron gates the graffiti and the ghetto which like the desert swept its sands over the landscape