2PENS&LINT
a new direction in poetry
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Philadelphia, PA 19130
A Different World
My father still laughs when he sees footage of the Rodney King beating
we first watched it one Wednesday night during dinner
I’m not sure why, but I cried
he kept eating
my mother didn’t say a thing
my brother, Peter, he’d just turned sixteen
he smiled, saying “Why did they stop?”
“They should have killed him”
my father tells stories of when Black people knew “their place”
he says their men are all thugs
and their women, all whores
says he’d kill me if I ever brought one of those ignorant, dirty…
through his doors
“respect your people
your forefathers
great men died for this flag
these stars
these stripes
these colors
red, white, and blue
this represents the true south”
he says “don’t forget your heritage, Timmy
remember your history, Timmy
put it in your poems if you have to
this is your home
this land belongs to you
so don’t let any nigger take this away from you son
understand?”
too young to know otherwise
I’d never left Adel, Georgia
the place I call home
where the only Black person I’d ever seen was old man Thomas
he’s the janitor at my school
my school, composed only of white students
my school, where race was never an issue
except for last year when this one kid hung a confederate flag
on our school’s flag pole on Martin Luther King’s birthday
my father could probably never understand how I felt about that day
so I wrote poems about it, questioning what it means to be
white like me, not black like you
in America
even in 2009
lately, my mother keeps asking me why I never come home
lately, I find myself hating my father for the hatred he holds in his heart
for the hatred he taught my brother
for the hatred he tried to teach me
cause this past August I started school in Atlanta
where many of my friends now are black students
who make good grades just like me
they laugh and they cry just like me
and when their fathers don’t understand them
they write poems just like me
last Thursday, our poetry professor asked us to write a poem
describing our college experience so far
I titled my poem A Different World.
-Christopher K.P. Brown
-A Different World is featured in Harlem 65.