Teaching Myself to Read by Karen Fiser
This one is from I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko. I love the idea of learning to read being akin to unlocking a secret. It’s so hard to remember not being able to read and I can’t say that I have memories of learning, so it’s nice to read this take on it.
Teaching Myself to Read
By Karen Fiser
From the first only saying
made things real. I climbed up word
for word the cliff face of all
four-year-old sorrows, reading
the signs in a heavy sky:
PABST. JAX. COKE. The marvel
was that these big neon signs
(unlike the small signs of home
trouble brewing) could be read.
I’d drag my father’s heavy
books down to the floor and hold
Last Man Off Wake Island close
to my eyes for hours. Inching
my finger across magic
black rows, I longed to unlock
the secret syntax and just
read myself out of this world.
