Return of the American Tough Girls

                                                                 to Geralynn and Ann

 One Elementary

My childhood toys were words.

In awe of snow,

I loved the brown sparrow.

On the edge of the tallgrass,

a blank page appeared in the clouds.

Meltwater covered the fields,

mud sucked at my shoes

and boots. My pen uncovered

mustard seeds in the ice

and beads buried in the road.

I received a tiny apron

for my first revisions.

 

Two Elementary

I nearly lose my shoes in mud.

At last I reach a gravel road

and then cement. On the horizon—

a choir in the meadow? Torn

from acres of khaki and the grass

where men and fields suffer,

page one has a drawing of a heart.

Soon, highway reaches LA

and the girls hitch a ride.

What is Colorado, Arizona, Idaho?

Directions lost and the air polluted,

help me, I am writing.

 

Three Elementary

Tossed from a car window, an alphabet

falls with the weather to the street.

I know how an “a” sounds—aah,

or the long  “a” of germination.

After my death, if a sheaf of wheat

on my gravestone is made of pixels,

trust me, when it disappears,

metaphor reaches the cloud.

To sustain the poet, sisters offer

their share of familial nouns and verbs.

Ecstatic to discover sound,

in English, repeat “the girls are alive.”

 

-Elizabeth Krajeck (Marion County)

Elizabeth Krajeck, Indianapolis, is the Community Writer for Butler’s Center for Citizenship and Community, created to link academic experience and community service. She is the author of two chapbooks and owner of Permanent Press, Writers and Editors, an occupied bungalow business. 

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem from an Indiana poet every day in April (hand-selected by Indiana Poet Laureate George Kalamaras). Check in daily to see who is featured next!