First Grade / Weather Girl by Janelle Cordero

First Grade

​In first grade I wore denim shorts to school every single day, even in the winter. I
was trying to prove something. My parents were divorcing, and I wanted to be
tough. So I wore my long denim shorts, hand-me-downs from my older brother, and
I wore my black Raiders jersey and a backwards baseball cap. It was a costume that
lasted a long while, a uniform that meant I wouldn’t cry or talk about my feelings.
And after a while of not talking about them my feelings went away, like gods
without any worshipers.

Weather Girl

​In high school my plan was to be a weather girl. I was pretty enough for it, or at least
my friends said so. Weather girls seemed polished and glamorous on television, and
they all spoke with such confidence about this storm or that stretch of sunshine.
Maybe wanting to be a weather girl was less about the weather and more about
wanting to know something, anything. Wanting to look up at the sky and
understand.

​Janelle Cordero

 is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle's most recent poetry and art collection, Woke to Birds, was published in October of 2019 through Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. Her debut poetry collection, Two Cups of Tomatoes, was published in 2015, and her chapbook with Black Sand Press was published in April 2018. Janelle published an additional chapbook of poems and paintings with Bottle Cap Press in 2019. Stay connected with Janelle's work at her website.