Alan King
Oct 01, 2014
Alan King is a credit to poetry and to the DC community. He speaks truth with lyrical beauty; and his life is lived exactly so. He reaches beyond poetry to surround the field with good will. What art does not need that spiritual assistance? His own work is clear and clean, no high fat content . He means what he says and says what he means, with emotional velocity and a sense of adventure. Alan's purpose is to make poetry redefine itself, and rectify our lives. - Grace Cavalieri
Alan King is the author of DRIFT (Aquarius Press, 2012). He's also a poet and journalist who blogs about art and social issues at alanwking.com. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, he holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. He is the recipient of the Best City Poem of 2006 (3rd Muses Prize ), and was a 2009 and 2012 Best of the Net nominee and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has been published in dozens of anthologies and journals including Tidal Basin Review, MiPOesias, Compass Rose, Black Arts Quarterly and Indiana Review, to name a few.
Photo: © Marlene Hawthorne Thomas
Hulk
Even the trees shudder
at the sight of me walking
the streets at night.
They tremble
as if I'm a defect.
Where I'm going,
I never know.
I get the urge and go.
That's freedom.
I forget that
because I'm black,
this late hour says
I'm up to no good,
says I'm a john
horny for Trouble
and her friends
working the block.
I forget that,
in America,
I'm not a man,
just one of a herd
the police are sent
to corral. Wind bends
the branches above me
as if I might swing from them.
White people look at me
and pretend they don't see
the breeding of slaves,
pretend not to know
why I hulk around
with anger and grief
swelling my biceps and thighs.
The other day my boss
took my hours and gave them
to a white man,
said he has a family
to support,
as if my life
could be swept into
a crack in the floor.
Rage rattled the cage
of me.
All I remember was how
he shrank in my shadow.
I wanted Bananas --
a bunch of them spooned body to body
like small yellow kayaks. So I missed
what you said about the war
in Libya. When you say Gaddafi,
I think of how they spoil
if they sit too long
on their wicker thrones.
We're in my car, listening
to WTOP. We passed a Spanish market
that calls what I love platanos.
Just saying plata-, my tongue snaps
like the slingshot's elastic strip,
hurling A's like stones.
You complain about the weak radio signal.
I could nod and punctuate your frustrations
with hums, as if I'm listening,
as if my head weren't full of Hunger's S.O.S.
I could pretend that the radio static
is annoying, as if the sizzling sound
it makes doesn't have me thinking
of sweet, chunky rhombus slices
frying in my mother's skillet,
or plantains boiled whole
with dasheen, dumplings
and potatoes to eat with salt fish
and coconut bake—
plates and plates
of large bananas, edible boomerangs,
nature's golden sugar-filled tusks,
the moon’s waning frown
or waxing smile.
The Blow
I was at home lying in bed,
listening to the world wake around me:
a woman yelled from the street,
I’m gone fuck you up.
She and her man knuckled up.
They were undercard fighters
no one bothered watching, but me.
He threw a jab that missed.
And I thought about that day
at recess: I slapped Nicole, thinking
it was the only way she’d chase me
like she did the popular boys. In fifth grade,
she was taller than me
with a body like the women
in my mother’s church,
the ones whose juicy curves
made my brain bright as a Lemonhead.
I watched the match
from my window, the couple’s clumsy
footwork almost tripping them up.
Bring it on! he spat.
And I can still hear Nicole
panting behind me, yelling:
I’ma punch your face!
A week before the chase,
we were in Kevin’s room
talking about the girls at school—
which one’s tongue we’d let
tango across our own.
And which one’s legs
we’d gladly nibble along.
My nerves fizzed like Pop Rocks
in Nicole’s mouth.
My boys laughed
when her name came up.
Kevin said, Good luck
trying to get her attention.
The boxers outside
were still at it—she dodged his jabs.
Her right hook slammed his jaw.
God damn it! he yelled
and the fight was over.
I watched him hold his jaw,
and recalled how my ego took a blow
when I saw Nicole
hanging with a boy too cool
to wear his pants on his waist.
This is the cost of not saying
what I felt. I should’ve told Nicole,
after catching her scent in the hall
before lunch, I’ll never think
of strawberry Bubblicious the same.
I should’ve made her laugh,
joking ‘bout the gym teacher—
Hulk Hogan’s look-alike with black hair—
or offer her some of my spicy fries.
I wish I hadn’t made her
a cyclone of curses and punches
spiraling towards me.
Point Blank
On summer vacation, we were black boys
playing cowboys and Indians
in a house that creaked
when we rode up warped wooden stairs.
Our imaginary horses stood and screamed.
We galloped around an antique coffee table
and claw-footed chairs in the living room--
pow, pow, your finger shot
'til you picked up your dad’s gun.
At twelve, our voices started tuning themselves
and a sour scent lingered
in what was growing in our armpits.
Our teens was the frontier
where we battled each other
before calling time-out
for grilled cheese sandwiches
and orange Kool-Aid drink boxes.
We smiled, rubbing our faces, wondering
if our itchy chins and upper lips meant
we'd soon be our dads in the mirror,
shaving cream masking our stubbled faces.
You said the itch tingled like the aftershave
you found, searching through your father's things.
Got something to show you, you said, laughing
when I yelled: Don’t point it at me!
You held his semiautomatic with both hands,
aiming at imaginary enemies. Pow, pow.
And I saw that day two weeks ago.
My friends, Tyler and Earl, ballers
walking from the courts,
dribbling between their legs
before some older guys
started arguing.
Idleness and Carelessness
flashed their guns at each other
before the crossfire and a ball bouncing
by two dead bodies.
I took cover behind the couch.
Sometimes I got close enough to chop your wrist
and punch your ribs.
I heard the knocking sound in my heart
and looked around the room
at the leather cranberry chaise,
chai-colored walls and the chandelier
hanging from the second floor ceiling.
I thought of mom at work,
and she became my slain friends' mothers—
baby photos across her lap,
crying every time she passed my bedroom.
I wanted to be her little boy again,
the one who held her hand to cross the street,
the one who wrestled with his dad
and ran through sprinklers in swimming trunks.
I was a boy whose world was Cap'n Crunch
and X-Men cartoons.
I wanted to go back
to my brother and me in the yard,
karate chopping invisible villains,
that age of make-believe
before the hair and body odor,
before the truth found me.
Slippery
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center
of my mind.
—Maya Angelou
Hey man, I know I did some triflin' stuff back in the day.
I'm not that cat anymore.
—Rahim
That Facebook message pops up
after a decade of silence.
It's Rahim.
Most folks called him "Droopy" because
every time he blazed blunts
his eyes were shade-drawn windows.
Others called him Dark Knife—
the emcee assassin, collecting
microphone casualties.
I knew him as Rahim, the poet
who called every brotha "king"
and greeted their women, Peace queen!
Let a guy get distracted,
Rah was Nagchampa smoke
in that woman's afro, her black dashiki
and tight jeans.
He was Terrance to his mom
before he joined the army.
I made him mad once, joking
he had more aliases than witness protection.
Who you owe money? I snapped. Whatchu' hiding?
He's married now and wants to know
if we can hang out again.
Just the other day,
working a metal cart through
the baking aisle, I spotted a woman
who put icicles in my blood.
She was standing near the spices
and herbs, wearing jeans
and a cayenne-color blouse.
But she wasn't who I thought
she was. Her paprika-bright lips and
adobo tan skin brought back a moment
nearly a decade ago.
She resembled that woman
Rah hooked me up with
at a bar in Manhattan.
Her name was Catalonia
like the itch on Spain's head
that holds Barcelona's sapphire sunsets.
Cat's eyes were that blue. Her hair
made me think of a magic fountain—
its cascade of curls lit by
pink, blue, and green laser lights.
Three months later, we were bobbing
our heads to Talib Kweli and Dead Prez
at a live show in Central Park.
I was planning another trip up there
before Rah swooped on her
when his other plans fell through.
He boasted about his fling
with her—how her mouth played over
his tender parts, how she was a bright horn
whose notes he jazzed out.
He was the Trojan horse.
His bad intentions overran
the lives of those who trusted him
before they ran him out of the city.
He was a used Lifestyle
lying on a sidewalk, a drooping Magnum
in a stairwell, lubricant oozing
from its wrapper.
I could hate him
if time wasn't a bulldozer,
if forgiveness wasn’t a road paved
down the center of my mind.
And yet my mouse lingers
over his message, wondering
whether to respond
or close him out.
Alan King, Photo © Thomas Sayers Ellis
Poetry, © Alan King, all rights reserved
