Fall 2012, Volume 13

Poetry by Kenny Fame

White Picket Fence

The elms spoke evenly to one another, over matters of the state
and then they began, branching off into a, distant silence…

leaving all others, hanging, on a limb.  You always seemed to
question, why all of the stars in Minnesota’s sky, would break
through the night, like pieces of shattered glass.   They would
shine so loud that, you would hear them, screaming out your

name.   It always made you, feel like a naughty little school boy
right, before he got caught touching himself,  inappropriately in the
bathtub, by his mama.    When you were a small child, did you play
hop–scotch, with a soda can that you’d crush—beneath your right

foot, then begin hopping & skipping over numbered pavement
back, & forth on one leg—then two, within a chalked out figure? 
I did, and for some strange reason that chalked out figure, always
knew how to pronounce my full name & pronounce it, correctly.

 

 

 

 

BIO: Kenny Fame is a African-American dancer/poet who was born in Paterson, N.J. He currently calls the village of Harlem in NYC his home. He was a recent graduate of Cave Canem’s 2011 & 2012 Poetry Conversations Workshop classes. He was the winner of “The Tenth National Black Writers Conference Award for Poetry.“ He has been a featured “Poet of the Week” on the Poetry Super Highway during the week of January 2-8, 2012. His work has appeared in numerous journals both nationally and internationally: Steel Toe Review #7 & 10, River Lit #5, The Fine Line, Emerge Literary Journal #1, Rufous Salon (Sweden), Milk Sugar, Prompt Literary Magazine, De La Mancha, Anastomoo, ken*again, Assisi Journal, African-American Review, Black Magnolias Literary Journal #6.2 & The New Verse News on December 18th 2011.