12/30: Kenyatta Rogers, 30 Poets in Their 30s.

As a poet often obsessed with structure, allowing a poem to have its own way with me can sometimes be a challenge. It can be hard to relinquish control of an idea – although an idea, by its nature, is intangible.

But Kenyatta Rogers is a poet with a wonderful sense of flow. My favorites among his poems tend to be associative, with connective tissue that's more intuitive than logical. To write a poem of this sort requires a highly attuned awareness of balance, and an acceptance of the fact that sometimes the poem wants to become something greater than even the creator might anticipate.

Rogers has these qualities in full. The work I've chosen to include is one of my favorite list poems - versatile, funny, challenging and saddening by turns. With Rogers, you never quite know what you're going to get – but the surprise is always welcome. I'm looking forward to great things from Rogers in the next few years, and so should you.

The poem below was previously published in Court Green.

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Purple Music

I had a dream about Thelonious Monk
and in that dream I told him I missed him

I told him I miss him . . .
I missed him

the beautiful ones you always lose
the gargoyle ate them all

all of them . . .
he ate them

I threw anything
I could find
rocks, I threw rocks
I threw shoes
I threw lamps
I threw a table
brick
and mortar
and dirt
and towels
I threw my mom
I threw my mom
I threw chairs
bubble gum
tables
light bulbs
lamps
trees
big blocks of wood
small pills of aspirin
I pulled up turnips
And I threw turnips
like Princess Toadstool
I threw turnips
thoughts
and pictures
and metaphors
I jumped in the Atlantic
and picked up the Amistad
and I threw the whole fuckin Amistad
and I threw bubblegum
Gabriel helped me throw Metatron
and then I threw Gabriel
I threw purple
I took small tufts of clouds
and I threw clouds
and 33 and a thirds
and jewel cases
spit
hair
nails
caskets
crucifixes
chunks of cement
Abraham Lincoln’s right eye
the bullet that shot Franz Ferdinand
Kennedy
Malcolm
Martin
Pac
Christopher
Mahatma
the one that started the revolution
which will be televised
 along with the TV.
 I threw 1080p
and 720
and standard definition
and mayors
and hubcaps
projectors
asbestos
the football
lock combinations
and bubble gum
did I say I threw the
bubble gum
it was 1989
and I threw
bubble bum

I once threw a Bible through a plate glass window
and it went all the way to Tehran

and this guy caught it
and pissed on it
and he burned it
and he ate it
and he shit it out

all in about 15 minutes
it goes through the system fast . . .

*

Kenyatta Rogers was the 2012-2013 Visiting Poet in English, at Columbia College Chicago where he also earned his MFA in Creative Writing Poetry. He is a Cave Canem fellow and was also a Poet-in-Residence for the Hands on Stanzas program through the Poetry Center of Chicago. His work has been previously published in or is forthcoming from Jubilat, Court Green, Reverie, Vinyl, Black Tongue Review, Cave Canem Anthology XIII, among others. He works as a teaching artist and still lives in Chicago.

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