A brown boy slumped in a filthy desk
in a filthy school in a filthy hood
in the United States of America
looks down into a picture
on a page missing one corner
and slips away into a rain forest
of greenness, soft earth and shade
marbled by sunlight streaking
through a three canopy jungle
where pigmy children in loin cloths
laugh and play in a circle of huts
made of sturdy sticks and mud,
their smiling mothers breast feeding babies
overseen by matriarchs stirring wooden bowls
and tiny men with spears standing guard behind them
in a picture in a torn and faded book
in a shabby classroom
where he daydreams himself inside a hut
to the sounds and soft breezes of night
under thatched roofs of broad leaves
where he can be for a few minutes
without Charles shoving him
against a cement wall