There is always a kid who struggles to be not
last, so not so thoroughly resentful as the pathological
hero of the back row whose anger is utter.

No, this kid flutters between the blessed ones in the hot
bright light of the teacher's attention and the dolls
whose voices are the string and pull of the powers

and whose faces are the poker faces of the misbegotten.
Around them there is a fragile kind of bliss. All
formed in the phenomenology of school's bad hair

and gym and jungle, all the plots and counterplots
of sleepover and dream, the biochemical
meshuga disorders of those years.

There is always one unraveling the knot
of the self, at 11 or 1 o'clock to you, in thrall
to the superficial and spiritual, passenger and messenger.

This is for you, LaShawna or Mark or Dot,
for your imminent arrival.
Get over yourselves you others.