Artist Bio
Rashad Wright is a student of New Jersey City Uni- versity, most known for his work with Peers Educating Peers Boy (PEP) as a certified peer educator.
Outside of NJCU, Rashad’s poetry has been heard from both local and national stages via slam poetry. He is Meets the only person to be titled the “Grandslam Champion of Jersey City Slam” twice. He has also competed in the 2015 World National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California then again in the 2017 National Poetry Slam in Denver, Colorado. Since Half 2016 he has also coached Jersey City Slam. Also at the 2017
Individual World Poetry Slam in Spokane, Washington
Rashad won 25th in the country. Way
He has also been awarded: First Place for the Walter
Glospie American Academy of Poets Prize. Outside of poet- Rashad Wright ry Rashad’s work expands into memoir, fiction, short story,
36 Thank You so here’s the deal Ma, Pa, Ez (editor), Ki, Kai, Shal, Eny, Chris, Chris squared, A there’s this girl Marie, Script Check, Auntie, Unc, J&M, SD Card, Doc G, J she writes poems Mulls, C-Harles, my haters, my lovers, my friends, my fam, and so do i E, Ant, Marz, G-Len, K, Trell, Tom, Mani, Jas, Jaz, Jas (not ever since then, sister), Z-Ki, P, PEP, J-Biz, Wordsmith, ETYC, Mal, Stevo, we write poems. Thomas, Mar-Cos, Kosi, U Square, Loser, Queen P, Pigeon, but we isn’t us JC, JC Slam, Woo, Karma, UCHS, Dr. D, Dr. Juneta, Cecily, A for very good reasons Saville, V-Nida, Mrs. V, Neeso, Tie, Frank, Mel, Wize, but there is this Jyquan, K.Dot, WriteNow, me, you, we, wii, they, them, and this is more theirs, Ang, Ryan, Will, Cortlin, D, Gabe, Urbana, Salazar, than enough. Emi, Lino, Roche, Steve Willis, Spirit of Life Ensemble, Mrs. Lorde, Marist, (fill in blank), Tony, Clauds, Solomon, Aman- dala, Michi, M-Sol, Charlota, Jabe, Zane, Raic, CTK, Greg, Emmy, P Tran, Roof-e, Ruiz, Rachel, That professor that failed me, Monk, Sistah’s Place, Anakbayan NJ, Claude, Freequency, Page, Cal, Saan, T-Rin, if I missed ya, still luv ya
Phone: 201-780-7204
Email: [email protected]
2 35 Table Of Contents Love Poem #–1______5
For When I’m Wrong______7
Two Step______9
Rock X Slide______12
Side Hero______14
Poet X Snowflake______17
Reasons I’d Never Date a Lifeguard______18
Poet X Guitarist______20
Thin______21
Storm X Storm______24
Love Poem #53______25
Tuesdays______27
Rat______29
Mouse X Cage______32
34 3
4 33 Mouse X Cage Love Poem #–1
there’s a hungry mouse in my living room you’re sixteen years old but I haven’t had a slice of bread but you look like a pile of jenga sticks since nicholas cage made a good movie twenty eight rounds in i’m sure nicholas cage feeds all his mice and every hand to reach for you and i’m sure that the mice know has looked like something you could fall for nicholas cage doesn’t make good movies. because you know you’ve never been good at standing.
you’re a transfer student halfway into the school year meaning you look new but feel fallen from a tree.
nevertheless you still apologize to the ground for every step you take because you know all too well how it feels to look like something people can walk all over,
every word to have left your mouth has felt like popcorn in a microwave.
so when your 8th grade crush turned swim team manager, aniyah coleman tells you that she likes you.
it’s showtime.
scene: the park,
setting: you and aniyah are walking down a concrete road without a crack in sight.
32 5 the sun is the crowd it’s not racists if they’re just rats, waiting to rise into a standing ovation. it’s called a food chain all whistles of wind didn’t you learn that in the fifth grade against the trees come to a halt when you saw a cops pistol pull the lunch money as if the entire world out of your best friend’s blood. knew that this was your que. or no you’d rather tell me that i’m the vermin and then you feel the pain, that i know the world made me be. the pounding from the fight your heart is winning against your chest this feels like the race you’ve been waiting your whole life for but you’ve skipped every practice life’s ever tried to give you. the sparks fly and her glasses look like rearview mirrors and love for the first time is so much closer than it ever appeared before. and for the first time a person’s hands looks like something that won’t strangle you and for the first time a pair of eyes isn’t looking past you and all that gravity in your mouth forcing out every word you’ve ever said isn’t there and for the first time after a really long time you froze, forgot your lines, broke a character you forgot you were playing and the next moment was the first time that anyone ever kissed you.
6 31 how to kill mice. For When I’m Wromg he said drown a lightbulb in peanut butter. smash the bulb when the mouse eats the peanut butter this/ /is another poem for her the glass will handle the rest. because I’m sure an apology will make a wrong turn down my throat one/ /day when i was sixteen i watched a friend rob someone and some mistake is going to pirouette/ i realized how much a knife looks like glass /out my mouth instead. realized how much i look like dad realized how broken light looks when its a trap. so I’m sorry/ /right now because I’m(sixty percent)something you can drown in nowadays that i’m more familiar with guns in other words stubborn as a tsunami than my own fingertips i wonder if i’m the rat or the peanut butter and you a forgiving low tide still letting a or the broken light looking for a good t-shirt rock/ /slide onto your shores to paint my face over. I’m sure sailors have made battle/ /grounds out of your waters i’m twenty-three now and haven’t swung a fist since basic training so I’m sorry for all the soldiers yet whenever i turn off the lights i can’t sleep too war torn/ /apart to apologize for themselves if it don’t sound like swinging fists. and yet you still wipe you tell me i got post-traumatic stress disorder the shrapnel//out of your eyes i tell you there’s a rat in the mirror. still care about me enough tell you that’s not a hashtag to see the roses//next to my rifle it’s just some good peanut butter so I’m sorry/ /for all these apologies doing its job walking around in camo(and)dogtags tell you that’s not a lynching its just roadkill I’m sorry because/ /one day we know dogs got heaven I might be/ /just like the rest but us rodents just got to find a nice katrina to roll over in 30 7 another stormcloud rat too proud to admit when my reign is in your eyes in fifth grade i was bilingual: english my second language, the last thing I want to do/ /is be violence my first. another sun trying to claim your skies i was a fistful of tongue twisters and if you had something to say about it so I’m sorry for writing you another poem i had five fingers for you to call lunch, when I should just be handing you an apology. at the time i didn’t even know what an apology tasted like
so when all the little bullies playing hide & seek with detention got caught, and i didn’t they called me rat, this became my name.
it took me twenty years to see how right they were.
whenever the lights came on i was nowhere to be found. whenever a gun was at my head i pulled a scurry out of my back pocket
a rat like me is really just the biggest mouse in the trap.
when i was fourteen my dad taught me
8 29 Two Step on tuesday, tomorrow is a magic no one believes in yet when neil armstrong landed on the moon, on tuesdays eye doctors the world/ /called it a giant leap for mankind sell monocles buy one get one free america/ /called it a huge step for black people on a tuesday long ago black people/ /called it a two-step the very first tuesday/ ripped/ /in half /god decided, nicolas cage would be an actor. we//been walking on moons since//the first because you have to balance sins with blessings burger hit the grill on tuesday, a good time my grandmother could hit an//electric slide calls in sick and the moon so smooth//you’d ask if her feet were ever on//the ground shows up early, lets you shine. one time I did a 100m dash so fast/ lets me shine for you on a tuesday. /I looked at my feet//and asked/ and i remember the day//you remembered//my name /“who turned off all that gravity” I because on that day//my dentist wasn’t in. on that day so aint have too much air//in my chest i had a shine behind my teeth from the second to last row but breathing//aint our strong suit round here of the bus you always missed. never the less or i always missed I’ve seen my uncle go from liquor store to church and i’m not sure back again all in the same breath i just know on tuesdays/ /no one misses buses, so yes// of course we walk through worlds or falls in love. we got entire galaxies all on the same block
naturally//nasa went out of business all the astronauts got spoiled by all that air conditioning
growing up the only//ventilation system we had was an open refrigerator door 28 9 I got enough/ /space force Tuesday in these sneakers to make nike go from just do it/ /to we just did it when home is a void//being a star is the only option on tuesdays, the bus moves a little bit faster//and//there’s always I mean serena// looks just like //venus a smile without an audience Bruno // been reppin //mars in the second/ /to last row and snoop aint been on earth where all/ /the wild things go since charlie brown//had a new episode. to talk shit about jayla even my mother//raised her only sun and the all they things they can’t afford got him looking like a//(nice guy)//night sky /as if they weren’t one in the same and even//when meanwhile jayla is blk girl magic #unbothered/ she aint have a bite in her teeth /devin has rainbow road lodged behind his eyes there was always//a north star and there’s a crow somewhere that thinks it’s a raven. on my plate//and a fullmouth on her sun. this is only mentioned on a tuesday, so//when I hit this shoulder lean//on a tuesday //most of the time we’re too busy it don’t end til saturday. stumbling over each other’s heart/ /beats/ why do you think us black people are always late, time is a bit no one falls/ /in love on a tuesday more understanding up here. or even falls or even has a dentist gives us more space to celebrate. that enjoys nicholas cage movies. makes the beat drop last a little longer all the dentists with bad taste and greasy hair don’t work until wednesday just long enough to forget how you treat your aliens on tuesday, friday is somewhere between long enough to forget all the crosses turned into supernovas history that hasn’t repeated itself yet and deja’s voodoo. we dance to forget all the heavens that aint in our orbit no more
10 27 six hundred eighty thousand words I forget a planet’s ring, is it a halo or the hoola hoop she died in i still haven’t decided if i deserve to rise again. or if god is ever going to tell me I mean when//emmet got hung that there’s going to be a light. he taught us a gift and our feet aint been//on the ground ever since and until there is a light i’m going to keep taking these shots so when neil// took that first step in the dark the same way i did, the first time //I wonder// fifty two poems ago. was he just too tired//to finish //the dance//
26 11 Rock X Slide Love Poem #53
i’ve written fifty-two poems, I remember a dream/ /that there was a rockslide three hundred sixty nine stanzas, on a dancefloor/ /in san diego and four hundred thirteen thousand six hundred lines the rock/ /slide-was three teeth short of a full smile and your name still finds a way had a catastrophe-for a heart/ /beat to spill itself all over my ink. and two right feet. to remind me of the way my blood looked in your sink, so the rockslide walks up to the dream and how my breath drowned knows that he-could fall-for her (and probably already did) in your drink. i think you swallowed but why would a dream care about a disaster everything I exhaled from a city that abandoned it’s sheep like it was holy water like it had forgiveness in it rockslide knows like it was the second coming he wouldn’t hit a note even if it hit him first but you were my first but the rock/ /slide knows he’s a rockslide you’d think I’d forget that after knows he’s one cold shoulder/ /away the twelve shot, from changing his name to-avalanche. after the seven cuts on my back, and the four hours you passed all over me dream tells rockslide he’s the fifth calamity just some drunk unconscious sacrifice. to come her way. and the only one without a dream/ /catcher. there is no forgetting you because forbidden fruit rock crumbles a little bit rock/ /slides to the left can only fall so far from its tree. many rockslides told dream I’m fifty-two poems in and I’m still the tree. they’d give her a happy ending. and after thirteen billion, sixty-three million
12 25 Storm X Storm all ended. when i asked for a win the day heard me wrong, avalanche/ /tells dream heard wind and blew a breeze he’s happy right now, so rough it called itself sandy says he been happy//he says “dream i got robbed that day. I can’t finish/(all this happy)all/by myself.” day sends an apology rockslide says-he ain’t trying to catch no dream, i receive bullet point he just wants to share one i barely missed the point by the breeze of my breathe and every/ /time I talk about this dream she tells me to stop calling myself a rock//slide. now it’s a few years later day still hasn’t given me a win, but there’s a gust where my voice was. and a vegan café is where the bullets were. nowadays I have a point i didn’t ask for and i wonder if this is how a day apologizes for what has been taken.
24 13 so when i ask my uncle Side Hero if he misses anything about jail, he says no not really, just the food. for all my side characters out there neither of us laugh. built like a dry strand of ramen noodles I, like you, did not always have my sauce. growing up I too was a goku in a yamcha’s body i looked like sokka, but smelled like appa. my breath was so bad it tried to master all four elements. my skin covered in so many pimples you could pluck enough dragon balls from my face to wish lebron james’ barber back to life, and life around here is rough I come from playgrounds where kids get the spin-off series knocked out of them, once I got hit so hard a girl’s north fist edited the air out of my chest and I aint see that breathe til four episodes later..
14 23 the last time and here I am i celebrated my birthday twenty four seasons old. i went to a buffet. after life has tried when i turned twenty-one to rewrite the blood out my veins it was my second year I wonder if you know in the national guard, what us sidekicks go through, my sergeant asks me why i enlisted i told him i’m in it for the food. i’ve seen bullets give friends season finales my recruiter told me i was out of shape said that my rifle would be bigger than i was. and on certain days in basic training I was fed double portions. I didn’t think I’d live past a climax. everyday was a birthday. sometimes I still try to scrape a level up outta shot glass. so when i pick up a fork it’s because i put down a rifle. yes, a main character has a weakness but we are the weakness nowadays my strong suit with a whisper for a battlecry is a pair of dogtags and boots with flesh full of battlegrounds i’m so good at consumption, the only difference between us and a villain i barely have to clean is that we don’t call ourselves heroes. a plate i’ve eaten off of. this is for the kids when people ask me how i stay in shape that thought they wouldn’t make it past i want to tell them that the rest of me is in camouflage their origin story when asked about my diet for everyone that didn’t know i want to say i’m a prisoner of war, where their next page would come from i’d rather hold a loaded weapon than an empty spoon. this is for all the krillin’s still swinging all the rock lee’s still kicking
22 15 this is for all the years Thin before you hit the screen for all your wins crammed into a montage as a kid, my uncle said this is for all the kids i’d have a really bad temper. with flashbacks for parents. said, i was so skinny my patience this is your theme song. was always going to be thin. nowadays people ask how i stay in shape, i’ll say that i failed geometry twice in the same year or that i’m a really bad cook.
when asked about my diet: i say it’s more of a budget. the other person laughs
i tell people eating isn’t my strong suit
my strong suit has heavy pockets and an empty stomach.
in my house a homecooked meal was a full breath.
i inhaled every crumb to ever come my way.
so why be surprised i look like a pile of scraps.
16 21 Poet X Guitarist Poet X Snowflake
whenever, i play as small as a whisper i’m sure there’s a snowflake somewhere a boy with a head of feathers that never saw a sunshine, and a hand full of music, a leaf that didn’t know it had some brown in it, listens to everything i say and a raindrop that hasn’t cried yet says there’s a poem in everyword. the same way there’s a poet i ask him, “so what’s a poem” that thinks she can’t write poems. he says “that thing you do even though when you stop fuckin whispering.” she makes every verse greener on the other side, has bent lines into smirks, and everyday she picks me up off the bottom of a page.
but what do I know, i’m just a snowflake dancing with a poet that looks like a sunshine.
20 17 Reasons I’d Never Date A Lifeguard #ChlorineIsTheNewJimCrow. After RADI
five. mama kept my head above water one. if sinking was an olympic sport and always put a full plate on the table i’d have so many gold medals i could go double platinum. taught me how to drown, led by example “mom, how’d you get so good at this” two. i don’t trust anyone with a hip pack, “son, because I thought your dad was a lifeguard” a hip pack is an extra pocket i don’t trust anyone that needs an extra pocket six. because I can swim by my damn self.
three. I’m bad business, got enough depth to make drowning real easy. there ain’t a single shallow water in me
i be the deep end, the bottom you started from only come here, if you ready to come home.
four. the human body is sixty percent water so to you I’m three-fifths a threat and forty percent hashtag
one drop of black makes you a full body of water.
i know how you treat water, throw us to fire.
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