Thrush Poetry Journal
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Adam Falkner

The Year the Wu-Tang Drops

Abbott elementary has your parents 
on speed dial. Each time 
Ms. Baker calls to deliver 
the same tiresome news, you 
offer the same, silent shrug. 
Interrogation sessions at the kitchen 
table go in circles. They wonder 
why you would do such a thing, 
where you heard someone say 
such words; you say 
you are sorry, it just--slips. 
Each four-letter leaps into the air 
like a winged grenade: playground, 
art class. Spelling tests. 

Scared to tell them the secrets 
you’ve discovered lurking outside 
your older brother’s bedroom, one 
ear pressed against his door 
like a stethoscope; how you thieve 
albums from his shelves 
like grapes in a grocery aisle 
then gorge in private 
like a post-break up eating binge; 
how you pound verses on repeat 
until each word is a mantra 
you can mumble in your sleep. 
Scared to tell them how 
“three continents away” this music feels 
pulsing inside your small body, 
how fat your whiteboy eyes bulge 
at the sight of something so 
unmistakably not yours. Scared 
to tell them how proud you are 
of what Method Man is quietly doing 
for your vocabulary. Each new weapon,
a dangerous insect you keep sealed 
in its own glass jar. How you 
roll it around in your mouth, 
a thick malt, tongue its edge 
like a chipped tooth, until certain 
of the exact ways it can scythe 
a room in two.




Adam Falkner is a doctoral student in English Education at Columbia University's Teachers College, and the Founder and Executive Director of the Dialogue Arts Project, an organization dedicated to using creative writing and the arts as tools for generating dialogue across lines of social identity and difference. His work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Literary Bohemian, Anti- and elsewhere, and was recently featured in Time Out New York  and the New York Times. He lives and works in Brooklyn. www.adamfalknerarts.com 




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