Orrin Schwab's poem pictures an inner-city school as a place slowly being buried. It begins in the cafeteria, with fish sticks, canned corn, and chocolate milk, while teachers talk over "their school" in a tone that feels tired rather than hopeful. From there the noise of the hallways grows so loud it seems to crack the building and ripple out into the empty streets nearby.
The middle of the poem turns education into something cold and mechanical. Textbooks pile up, and society, "layered in ink and paper," becomes "inventory," as if learning were just stock on a shelf. The ending stretches time out over months and years, and the people in the halls seem worn down, resigned to iron gates and graffiti. The desert of the title finally arrives as a comparison: the ghetto, like sand, spreads over everything.
The mood is bleak and weary. The speaker sounds less angry than quietly defeated, watching a place lose its life bit by bit.