Teresa Dzieglewicz
Poetry
Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator and Pushcart Prize-winning poet. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She has received fellowships and residencies to New Harmony Writer’s Workshop, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and the NY Mills Arts Retreat. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in the Pushcart Prize XLII, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sixth Finch, Ninth Letter, Thrush, RHINO, and elsewhere.
To the abstinence-only educator at my high school:
Lady, I’m sorry you wasted your money
on that grocery store rose, petals creased
white from cheap scrunchy cellophane, sinewy
green scabs where there used to be thorns.
Sorry you wasted your time ripping your french tips
into the flower’s dark crimson hips, petal-flesh
shards reddening my desk. You stood in the glow
of your powerpoint, ponytail swatting
the STD bulletin board, licked your lip gloss
this is how sex makes your body ugly
for the man you’ll marry, shook the shorn stem in my face,
is this what you want to give to your husband?
Lady, I was fourteen, suddenly feeling my body
like a wind chime, ringing with the breath
of everyone else. I almost believed you,
believed I was someone else’s piece of bouquet,
until the first time
I made myself come,
and I was
a sapling
snapping
back, a potpourri
of macaws,
winging
from feathered
pistils
of the tulip tree
all at once
a fist
unfolding
unfolding
the most open
palm
prayer. And lady, I’m sorry you looked
in your mirror that morning, buttoned
the box of your blouse, made pink buds of your cheeks,
practiced whispering
your body is beautiful
for somebody else.
Listen: