School for Runaways

Often funny, sometimes harrowing, each prose poem in the debut chapbook from Erik(a) Jonah captures a moment in the daily life of a school for runaways and homeless youth. Jonah’s poems introduce a cast of students and a teacher (once a troubled youth themself) seeking glimmers of human connection amidst the housing crisis, the Trump presidency, and the often harsh realities of survival. We are invited inside scenes at once prosaic and intensely poignant, as a teacher makes smoothies for breakfast and collects students’ weapons, a student eats a chicken sandwich while his sister lights his sleeping bag on fire, a teacher reviews fractions with a youth who sells fentanyl, a non-binary student falls in love and searches for direction, and a young mother’s baby mashes banana into the carpet.

Throughout are surprises and beauty, from pet rats named after jazz musicians to youth handing out gifts on the same corner where they used to panhandle. At once playful and humanizing, School for Runaways is a rare confluence of literary poetics and stories from the unhoused community.