Chalk dust fingers

and

Jell-o tongues

Aligned wearing

Pressed white shirts and sharp blue bows

hold

Bright coins that fall dull upon the ground

hold

Kite strings that bloody their palms and intertwine with trees

hold

Overflowing pockets of notes and marks and words

On pages torn from books and pads of sticky adhesive

Curled cream white with lanes of hospital blue and road marks of red hug the

Corrections

And as the sheets are doled onto the children,

The pile of paper cuts mouths a river

Origami boats made of notes of words and corrections and marks and stories and secrets

Float

Like hot air balloons

Coasting easy on the

Paper mache youth

That is wet

soaked

drowned

soggy

ruined

ignorance

for this was their enamel

and it cannot be re grown