"Continental Breakfast" by Nkosi Nkululeko

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February 6, 2023 

Continental Breakfast

Nkosi Nkululeko

I know we the finest Black folk in this southern, La Quinta Inn, but damn,
the White folk won’t stop lookin’ at us funny. The 2% milk-carton faces
the backside of a fridge’s glass door; classic Lucky Charms in Styrofoam
bowls, which squeak when you bend them. It’s unremarkable here
but we’re at least bored together, in line for food . . . news on a monitor
propagandizing in one ear, coming out abandoned in the only Other.

When there’s nothing to do, our Blacknesses practices metamorphosis.
This du-rag used as coffee sleeve. Bonnet as lampshade. We’d retire
in the pagoda with cigarette butts decorating cobblestone like flower stems.
I want to outgrow the flammable baggage that we left in the room
of our memory. Sometimes, when you forget what I say, I feel better for it.
As if, I get to share something with you . . . again, but what was that [thing
you said], in our argument about [something I forgot]? We are in the lobby,
silent, waiting for the other to disturb our discontent with a pun about crackers.

Copyright © 2023 by Nkosi Nkululeko. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Despite the poem’s quiet and serious reflection, I found the making of this piece to be almost entirely comedic, unserious. I was inspired by a trip my partner and I had taken down South. Visiting landmarks in America is a bit unremarkable. We got to see beautiful ducks from inside our pedal boat, but it was hot as hell. Sometimes a ‘gaze’ from others burdens a venture, but why widen its shadow? I used boredom as a lens to peek through the discomfort. The reason we laughed so much is because, what else should we do with our time?”
Nkosi Nkululeko

Nkosi Nkululeko

Nkosi Nkululeko is the winner of Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2018 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets. The recipient of fellowships from Callaloo, Poets House, the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and The Watering Hole, Nkosi is a poetry, music, and chess instructor from Harlem.





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Thanks to Patricia Smith, author of Unshuttered (Northwestern University Press, 2023), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Smith’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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