By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.
ADRIAN MATEJKABy that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself.
ADRIAN MATEJKAI was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.
ADRIAN MATEJKAThe contrasts between the haves and have-nots is so complicated.
ADRIAN MATEJKABut it’s become very clear the past nine years that some Americans truly resent thinking before they speak.
ADRIAN MATEJKAIt was in the air somehow. That ownership of bigotry. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.
ADRIAN MATEJKAThe day after the president Trump election, I remember feeling like it was 1984 again.
ADRIAN MATEJKAThere is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back.
ADRIAN MATEJKAI learned a new language for it all in the 90s. Which in some ways isn’t bad.
ADRIAN MATEJKABones 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
ADRIAN MATEJKAThis 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 a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that.
ADRIAN MATEJKAYou should check out William Shatner’s album The Transformed Man.
ADRIAN MATEJKAI was always casting about for role models as a kid and the Star Trek was always available via reruns and also full of possibilities.
ADRIAN MATEJKAThe 1990s were also when a bunch of the soft-shoe language for race, gender, and class became paramount.
ADRIAN MATEJKAI had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.
ADRIAN MATEJKAIt will alter the way you hear poetry forever. And not in a good way.
ADRIAN MATEJKA