I Think I Know This Kid!

From If You’re Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand: Poems About School, by Kalli Dakos:

Caleb’s Desk Is a Mess

When Caleb was away,
The teacher cleaned his desk.
She said, “I can’t stand it anymore.
This is too much
For a teacher to bear.”

She shuddered a bit
Each time she put her hand
Inside Caleb’s desk.
Maybe she thought something
Was growing in there.

We watched her take out
One-half of an old ham sandwich
That was turning green,
Five monstrous spit wads,
One sock with a hole in the toe,
Papers and notebooks
That looked like they had been
Through the garbage disposal,
And the subtraction sheet
Caleb though Rick
Had stolen from him last week.

She took that pile of mess
And placed it carefully
In a green garbage bag.

Next she put his pencils
Neatly in a row
Beside his erasers,
And piled the tattered workbooks
In a corner of his desk.

Then she washed her hands.
“We must help him
Get more organized,”
She told the class,
Drying her hands well.

When Caleb came back,
He looked in his desk
And howled,
“Who ruined my desk?
Now I’ll never be able
To find anything!”

In the first building I taught in we ate our lunches in the classrooms. Finding old food and bags of milk was not uncommon, but always unwelcome.