POEM #10- A Phonics Girl

April is National Poetry Month. I'm trying to write a poem every day. I've chosen, "A Reading Life" as my theme. Some days I'm writing along with Amy Ludwig VanDerwater over at the Poem Farm. Amy's theme for this month is "One Subject, Thirty Ways." She is writing, every single day, using a different structure or poetic technique, about the constellation Orion. Today's technique was a "circular poem." Amy describes it this way:

A circular poem begins and ends the same way.  Some people call this "going out the same door you came in," and this is a good way to remember it.  Sometimes a circular poem - or other text - closes with the exact same words, and sometimes it closes with words that are much like the beginning. 

Here's my attempt at a circular poem. 

"A Phonics Girl"

Me? I have never been much of a phonics girl.

Second grade. 

I am wearing my new brownie uniform.

Tan button up the front dress. 

Pumpkin orange tie. Stretchy belt. Felt beanie. 
I love the beanie. 

I wear it all day. 

Even to reading group.

We sit on hard wooden chairs

in a semicircle in front of the teacher. 

A large chart hangs beside her. 

She spells the words on the chart.

L-e-t. Let. N-e-t.  Net. P-e-t. Pet.  

I know how to read these words.
These are baby words. 

I can read chapter books. 

Mrs. Crowder points to the words.
She tells us they are all short e words. 

I think she is talking about the height of the letters. 

I agree with her about let. 

The e is shorter than the l and the t. 

But what about get and yet?

The g and y are the same height as the e..

But that part that hangs down, what about that?

And what does short e have to do with reading anyway?

I tip my head back. My beanie falls off. 

I hop up, walk through the center of reading group,

around the back of the circle, pick it up, 

traipse through the center of reading group, sit back down.

Mrs. Crowder is still talking about short e. 

I tip my head back. My beanie falls off again. 

I hop up, walk through the center of reading group,

around the back of the circle, pick it up, 

traipse through the center of reading group, sit back down.

The third time Mrs. Crowder stops me. 

"Carol," she says, "Don't you want to learn to short e?"

"No thank you," I say. "I don't care to learn short e.

I can already read."

And so the rest of the class learns short e. 

While my impudent already reading self
 sits on the cold tile floor in the hall 

twirling my brownie beanie on one hand

and picking read playground gravel 

off the back of my bare legs with the other.

Me? I have never been much of a phonics girl.

(C) Carol Wilcox, 2018