Two Poems, by Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk

The Gift

Pepperell Elementary School, Lindale, Georgia 1955

Here, Terry, you can carry the flowers—

privilege bestowed, to walk out the class-

room door to the sink at the end of the hall,

dump fetid water, try not to gag, wipe

slime from inside the vase, toss the rotting

stems, then back to my obedient fifth

grade seat, unwilling pet, the one child

not mill-bound. I chose “Beatitudes”

on my turn to read a Bible verse, spelled

“Terry” with my index finger in the air

to ward off boredom, imagining my name

a timeless silver trail. After she said poems

had meter and rhyme, my “Halloween Time”

rhymed “faces” with “grimaces,” which she found

hard to believe, since having us trace

its pictures and copy a story word for word

from our reader comprised her pedagogy.

My educator father railed against this

replication of text, but I was afraid not

to obey. After all, hadn’t she explained

how the pronoun he is used to refer to all

of humanity because women are not as

important in this world as men? Year’s end some

gift seemed due, so I threaded colored skeins

through holes punched in the needle-point’s

cardboard pattern until red, black, turquoise,

brown, yellow, white formed a not unpleasing

rooster held out to her in my shy hand. Why,

you must think I’m just an old hen! she cried.

___________________

Mr. Light

Jim Cherry Elementary School, Atlanta, Georgia 1957

___________________

Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk is author of  body & field (1999), finalist for four first book awards; Escape Artist, winner of the 2002 John Ciardi Prize; and One Less River, a Kirkus Reviews Top 2019 Poetry title. Winner of the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, a Kresge Literary Fellow, and Founding Director of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project, she now resides in Connecticut.