Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
School for Runaways

School for Runaways

Jonah

Paperback

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $10.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 27, 2026

ISBN10: 1625572158
ISBN13: 9781625572158
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Published: Oct 27 2026
Pages: 38
Language: English

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.

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