FOUR-YEAR-OLDS PAINT AFTER LOOKING AT GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S FLOWERS
- Nov 10, 2025
- 1 min read
Updated: Nov 26, 2025
By Joanne Esser
They say, I want to make one like Georgia’s
and study fresh flowers in the vase.
Young eyes and fingers examine
stamen, pistil, leaf and stem,
serious as scientists.
They know her language, speak it
in colors as loud as singing:
poppy orange, geranium red,
dots of pure black in the center.
Petals leap off the edges
of their papers. The children’s
small hands dip fat brushes again
and again into jars of tempera,
smear bold strokes like shouts of YES
to the blooming of the world.
They make flowers like love,
like laughing, like their own births
that happened just a few years ago.
The newness they paint is like their own:
big, close-up and fearless.
Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections "All We Can Do Is Name Them," (Fernwood Press, October 2024), "Humming At The Dinner Table," and the chapbook "I Have Always Wanted Lightning." Her new book of poems, "Nothing Is Stationary," will be released by Holy Cow! Press in June 2026. Recent work appears in Great Lakes Review, Humana Obscura, I-70 Review, Dunes Review, The Main Street Rag, and Orca, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years. She lives with her husband in Eagan, Minnesota.
