Malik Abduh
Malik Abduh is a poet & essayist. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden, where he received the 2008 Rutgers University Alumni Association Creative Writing Award. He teaches English at Rowan College at Burlington County & is the editor of the College’s journal, The Baron Anthology. His work appears in several journals & magazines including Southern Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Exit 7, Slush, & Some Call it Ballin’ Magazine. His debut collection, All the Stars Aflame, is forthcoming with Get Fresh Books Publishing.
Word Problems
When do you know you’re a poet & not a mathematician?
When you sit in Mr. Masker’s class & he reads,
Timmy has $10.38 in his pocket. He buys two cans of sardines for 53¢ each,
a bag of salt & vinegar potato chips for $1.24 & a dill pickle for 96¢,
how many nickels does Timmy get back in change?
But you have no interest in the numbers, only the narrative.
You picture Timmy, short, hands too small for his body.
He loves Three Stooges reruns & secretly listens to KISS.
He fakes a Brooklyn accent to rebel against suburbia,
& has been in love with a girl name Sparky since she moved
up the block. You know his backstory, his conflict, what’s at stake—
but for the life of you, you can’t figure out how many nickels
the cashier just dropped in his palm.
Graveyard of Poets
I slid the papers across their desks, &
the mood in the room grew somber
as a wake. They hated poetry, & the hypocrite
in me hated to have to teach it to them.
Corey lifted the paper in front of him,
a white veil beneath his eyes.
Who Walt Whitman? he asked.
A poet from Camden, I replied
He unveiled his face, tight as a Charlie
horse, Don’t no poets live here.
He didn’t know that Whitman has been
entombed a hundred & twenty years in two
granite stones fixed in a hillside, the initials of
pilgrim poets carved in the trees all around him.
I mention Whitman’s tomb is in Harleigh & Corey
looked up from the poem, my brother buried there.
& I remembered his brother, how he used to cut
up in my class, tapping on his desk & rhyming under
his breath half the period.
Then I imagined his brother’s grave, a headstone
no bigger than a cinder block—no trees, no initials.
How many pilgrim poets have passed his grave
& never read his name or stopped to carve theirs?
& how many times has Corey passed the stones
of the gray poet, leaves of fresh cut grass staining
the soles of his shelltops?
The Lincoln of Letters
“The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated: it is the law of races,
history, what-not.”
-Walt Whitman
I have squirmed in my seat since my 2nd grade teacher Ms. Cherry
threw a reading workbook at my bowed head, nested in the warmth
& darkness of the valley between my forearms & shoulders.
In those days, teachers treated us like prison labor.
In high school, we were sentenced to four-years of Poe,
Pound, Eliot, & Dickinson, while the only poets I wanted
study were Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, & Kool G Rap.
In grad school, I broke the rocks of the Romantics, but
knew Brooks & Dumas were waiting for me at the gates.
Africa has left us no classic poets, a classmate said.
The canon is of Europe & the New World.
& by us he meant Milton, Yeats—& himself.
Another student, leaned over to me like we were in
a confessional & whispered so low I almost had to read
his lips. Where he get that bullshit from? I tapped the cover
of our anthology like a hand drum & scoffed.
Maybe Whitman.
Is it Something He Said?
for Richard Pryor
When I snuck past my father, he was all over the
couch mumbling a drunk man’s dream & crunching
the plastic cover with every turn. But no matter how
much he crunched, not a drop spilled from the pint
of Southern Comfort on his chest.
I fumbled with the diamond knob on the basement
door & creaked down the stairs into the red-light district.
When I stubbed my toe on the washing machine, it
rumbled through the house like a dump truck—but not
a peep from Pops. So I flipped through the stacks of albums
in milk crates—& there, tucked between Donny Hathaway
& the Ohio Players, the bushy afro & wild man’s smile:
Ladies & Gentlemen, the one & only Richard Pryor!
& as the record spun, I heard my neighborhood in every groove.
Bartender, nigga give me my whiskey!
& I could see Uncle Bill coming out of Basin’s Lounge,
stumble across Tasker St. & slump over the hood of his car,
mistaking his pant leg for a toilet bowl.
Officer, I -am -reaching -into -my -pocket –for-my -license!
& I could see Pops moving real slow for his wallet the night
some state troopers pulled us over in Jersey.
You don’t know how to deal with the Whiteman. That’s your problem.
& I could see Scoop drinking Malt Duck on 24th St.,
going on about trickledown economics, giving the kind
of wisdom only a wino can.
Did ya’ll see The Exorcist? It’s a story about the Devil…
& there I was in the 69th St. theater with my sister,
our feet up in the seats. While the mice scuttled
beneath us, we watched this crazy girl throw up pea
soup & twist her head around.
The whole time, I kept one ear on Pops upstairs
& one on Pryor, sounding like our fathers, our uncles,
our neighbors—our junkies, & sat there wondering
why they hid him from us in basements.