This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.
ADRIAN MATEJKAI was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
More Adrian Matejka Quotes
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It will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.
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It’s financial of course, but it’s also the lifestyle choices. The more money people have the further away from each other they often want to be.
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Bigotry doesn’t care about state or regional lines. It’s all over the place.
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But it’s become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.
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One of the things I took from the show was emotional possibility.
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That was one of things that surprised me so much when I was writing the poems.
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I was always casting about for role models as a kid and the Star Trek was always available via reruns and also full of possibilities.
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I learned a new language for it all in the 90s. Which in some ways isn’t bad.
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I mean getting people to think about what language actually means before they use it is a good thing.
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It made me want to change the kinds of poems I was writing, but I’m terrible at writing overtly political poems.
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I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
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One of the hardest things for me to do is be fully open in a poem.
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So while I loved not being hungry and having new gear, etc. I missed the sounds of my neighbors and the kind of generosity people who are struggling together often show.
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Bones was a grouch but he was sympathetic. The show worked like a boy band in that way… it had characters who embodied different psychic or emotional positions and that allowed me to see a great range of things
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The contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated.
ADRIAN MATEJKA






