Poetry

What Happened in First Grade?

A found poem about learning how to read

What happened in first grade? You had to learn to tell a b from a d from a p. They looked so much alike but the capitals looked different.

Some letters could have more than one sound. You sounded out stop and understood how the drivers knew what to do. You saw ice cream on the front of a store and knew

a whole world you wanted.

I wrote this poem by cutting and pasting found text from a vintage English textbook. I made the collage on an index card. I wrote this a few years ago when my foster daughter was in first grade, so I was thinking about her experience as she was just starting to learn to recognize words and sentences, and I was remembering when I learned to read, too.

For another poem with experiences from my childhood, check out “Legacies.”

For another poem that uses found text, you might like “How I Stay in Shape by Marilyn Monroe.”

Thanks for reading my work!