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
Return to September 2014 Edition
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
Return to September 2014 Edition