Little Kings

By Peter Kahn

Peter Kahn's debut collection Little Kings is an astonishing book of astute and deeply humane poetry, one which seeks to find in both teaching and learning a common ground, and between longing and belonging an equilibrium. Intuitive and wise, Kahn's poems remain compelling even when exploring those places where there is "no vocabulary for what might happen".
Little Kings encompasses stories of the Jewish diaspora and of American life, interweaving narratives of escape and refuge, of yearning and absence. Some of these poems ricochet with the magnitude of loss and violence, with lives interrupted, half-lived, or vanished. Anchoring these poems is their immense grace and lyricism, and Kahn's great skill in tenderly carrying memory and experience into our shared understanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Jun 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781911027980

Peter Kahn

A former Chicago social worker, Peter Kahn is a founding member of the London poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen. He has twice been a commended poet in the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition and was a finalist in the Fugue Poetry Contest and Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition. A high school teacher since 1994, he has also been a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths University. He was named runner-up in the 2019 NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry. Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, Peter co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks.

Book preview

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Little Kings

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Little Kings

Peter Kahn

ISBN: 978-1-911027-97-3

eISBN: 978-1-911027-98-0

Copyright © Peter Kahn, 2020

Cover artwork: © Taylor Varnado

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Peter Kahn has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published June 2020 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

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For Mom, Dad, Grandma Liz, Grandma Grete, Papa Hans, Uncle Al, Neon Street Center for Youth, Malika’s Kitchen & Spoken Word Club. This book doesn’t exist without you.

Contents

I

Grandpa’s Fancy Watch

…Till It’s Gone

Little Kings

Tuesday Mornings at Neon Street Center for Youth

Dear Mrs. Gire

Waiting With No Vocabulary

2771

On top of the Monte Carlo

An Evening Prayer

Time Machine

The Rake

How Do We Make It a Building?

Driving to the Cemetery

What Made You Fall

…Recipe for Me

Skull-and-Bones

II

Quit

Wolf Man of Wicker Park

Something About…

Turn

Fire-Forgotten

Upstairs at Ronny’s Steakhouse

Independence

Sweating Through My Suit

Elmer’s Glue Girl

How It Was Then

Verboten

Grayed In and Gray

On Seventeen Years of Teaching

Pretending Not to Notice

Sitting Here In…

Pavlov in Chicago

Loathe

The Surprise of It

In 1979, the Shah of Iran is deposed

Mrs. Lancia

…Shooting at Nothing Here

III

Just Missed

On First Knowing You’re a Teacher

All I Hear is Kaddish

The Sombre Room

When You’re Not Able to Smile

Not Quite

Grey is More Than a Colour

Firefly

The Search for Meaning

Dropped

Blame

The Stench of It

Barks

What a Teacher’s Dream Looks Like

A Happy Alzheimer’s Poem

Gratitude and Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

I

Grandpa’s Fancy Watch

A long, long time ago, before even the iPhone,

Grandpa Hans had a fancy wrist watch.

It had no battery, and nothing to wind it up—

as long as he moved, so did the watch’s

hands. It was some slick trick.

Grandpa’s forearms looked like holiday

hams. They rippled from the meat

he chopped year after year at the butcher

shop. How did he slip on that watch?

Grandpa would take it off and tell me

to watch the hands slow to a stop.

Don’t shoot, they’d say. He’d tell me

to close my eyes and count to twenty.

When I opened them, I’d look at the hands

waving, We’re alive! We’re alive!

The watch died when Grandpa Hans

did, its hands clasped in prayer.

…Till It’s Gone

A Golden Shovel after Joni Mitchell

When I tell you about Steve, don’t

think just because he killed someone, it

means he’s a dog to put down. There’s always

two sides and while it may well seem

that his story reeks of bug-eyed maggots, to

judge him without the bullet’s story is to go

down a light-less dead-end street that

isn’t a street after all. When I ask you

to listen for the clink of ricochet, don’t

forget