First Grade
Days before
Thanksgiving Day.

Teacher
distributes
oversized sheets

of drawing
paper and
crayons

to a room
of kids in
holiday mode.

The task
o draw a
Thanksgiving Turkey.

Excitement
fills the room.
I hyper focus.

This is is my
kind of project!
I start drawingj,

fill my blank canvas,
a palette of
brightest colors.

At end of class
teacher collects
our drawings,

displaying
them on
blank walls.

She looks at
and compliments
my drawing.

She tells me
I should go
to art school.

At dinner I tell
parents about
teacher’s comment.

My father grumbles
something about
art and artists.

My mother smiles.
From that day on
my mother became

lifetime
patron of
daughter’s art.

 

Janet Cormier is a painter, writes prose and poetry, and performs comedy. Janet prefers different and original over pretty. She loves collecting stuff, but cleaning not so much. Janet also talks to strangers. A lot. Her column appears weekly on Oddball Magazine.