Perfect

Valentine’s day in Pawnee,

Oklahoma cedar

trees with too much sap,

churches, schools, and rich houses

made from brownish-red fossil rock

construction paper cut

pink and red perfect hearts

and art room scissors too dull

when I tried to cut a half

into a whole, my lines crooked

lop-sided, Mr. Hart

the art teacher’s heart unfolded

had perfect cleavage

more perfect

than mine.  He drew lines

without thinking, looking

whipped his switch against

the air, whoosh lifted my brown hair

standing behind my metal

chair I kept my neck lowered

when he leaned close and whispered,

Your heart isn’t a heart at all!

Uneven failure for mother. 

Doreen Hatfield could make perfect hearts.

She poured Elmer’s glue

along a perfect line, like winter

sprinkling glitter for snow

before I had my pencil sharpened.

 

Decorated brown sacks lined the window sill ledge

everyone would get a valentine

because teachers, not Mr. Hart,

pretended to love us all.  Some rich boys’ and girls’ sacks

were stuffed with envelopes wedged in, sprouting

up with “To Robert with love.”

I was average just like my heart,

my sack half full was good enough

cherry Kool-aid and cookies was all that mattered anyway. 

Cy Epperly didn’t live in a house made from fossils,

big and shy, didn’t speak, lived on the Pawnee reservation

lingered at lunchtime and poured sugar on his goulash,

teachers his only valentines.

One year I was brave

and dropped a box of chalk heart

candy in his sack

helped him with his math,

he would nod when I coaxed him.

After that year, my hearts were perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This poem first published in Oklahoma Today, Jan/Feb 2008.