ODE Poem: Ode to the Public High School (Year 27), by Sarah McMane

Here’s to the freshman in the kelly green pantsuit
channeling her inner Hillary as
she struts down the hallway
schedule in hand, in search of a
cinderblock classroom;

Blessed is the sophomore
who came in from the rain in
mirrored sunglasses and
Jim Morrison vintage polyester shirt
strolling past the
laughing “Fuck yeah” boys—
junior football players who
stumble unapologetically into
English classes
massacring the vernacular in
grins and grimaces,
slapping backs and saluting teachers.

Praise be to the senior sporting
a glittering tiara and black combat boots
with no trace of irony,
her eyes thick and heavy with
kohl black eyeliner (she’s under there somewhere),
and the brave boy boasting a
hopeful Harvard sweatshirt on the
first day of a new school year.

Let’s hear it for the girl in the cropped
I vampires tee, next to
the gaggle of girls in summer sundresses and Converse,
carefully orchestrating pretty and
nonchalant like a curated bouquet of
wildflowers.

I salute the stragglers who can’t zip up
their hoodies high enough to hide behind,
the ashen-faced fashion acolytes wearing
too much highlighter over too plucked brows,
the confused wanderers who show up to
second semester’s period seven class
six months early.

They come in all shapes and sizes and colors
with names as unusual as Astoria,
common as John,
complicated as
“Curtis Allen Conway-Carpenter III
but you can call me ‘Alex.’”

Sports socks and gym bags and backpacks
AirPods and laptops and composition notebooks
lipsticks and coffee cups and stainless-steel water jugs;
Some spilling out of bustiers and others clad in
Pokémon pajama pants.

There is a place for all here in
this temple of my familiar,
This stream of dreams and drudgery,
180 days a year