School Days

Each day I leave home
I climb into my lunch box

and squeeze between sandwiches
placed square next to larger square.

I crawl down underneath.
Make sure there is nothing

to be stepped on. The bologna
is dead -- so is the SPAM.

The peanut butter and jelly,
my favorites, curve soft

around my neck. Pillows to rest on.
The thermos overhead sparkles

from outside light.
Sometimes I drink from it.

It drips down ointment
I use to make me safe from injury.

I hide from myself carrying pail,
from older ones who push me

off sidewalk. They yell hot breath
against my back. Hit me in soft

places. Take my lunch pail away.
Then I crawl inside myself and hide.

John Fitzpatrick

John Fitzpatrick c ompleted a 2004 poetry residency at Vermont Studio Center. He received the 2003 Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, given by Birmingham-Southern College, AL. Since 2003 his poems have taken honors in City Works, Mad Poets Review, Confluence, Taproot Literary Review, and Clark College 2004 Writers. Other poems have appeared or will be forthcoming in The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Cape Rock, Plainsongs, Asphodel, California Quarterly, & others. His 2000 New York University dissertation for his Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Arts and Humanities dealt with the poet as creator and reader responder.