Christine Lamb Parker: Four-Year-Old's First Test

You do a graceless swan dive
off the couch
when the new woman appears
to test you for kindergarten.
After you have shown her
your hockey trophy, your sister's photograph,
she begins
with authority:
"How are a pencil and crayon similar?"
You say, "They are both skinny."
She checks the box marked wrong.
"Fill in the blank--red, white, and ..."
"Green." Wrong again.
"Where does ham come from?"
You think and think,
then say, "God."
Wrong.
"What would someone who is brave do?"
You answer quickly,
"Walk through rose bushes."

        --Christine Lamb Parker, fromYankee  Magazine. Poem anthologized in Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999 (2000)