On Writing 'Tuesday Mornings at Neon Street Center for Youth'
Little Kings is the long-awaited debut collection by poet and educator Peter Kahn. Through his astute and deeply humane poetry, Kahn seeks common ground in his experiences of both teaching and learning. His poetry encompasses stories of the Jewish diaspora and of American life, interweaving narratives of escape and refuge, violence, yearning and absence.
We asked Peter to choose a poem from the collection and tell us the story behind it. Peter shares an autobiographical poem based on his experiences as a former social worker in Chicago. Here's a chance to read the poem in full and learn the story that inspired it.
Tuesday Mornings at Neon Street Center for Youth
If Steve didn’t kill anyone,
it’ll be ok. If Steve didn’t kill
anyone, it’ll be ok. Repeat,
as necessary, before punching
the glowing 4 outside the elevator
at the group home on Sheridan
and Lawrence. A mantra, perhaps
a prayer. Exit on the 4th floor.
Check in with the night staff. Learn
which fears materialized over
your Sunday/Monday weekend.
Who broke curfew. Who ran away.
Who was arrested. Who got kicked
out. Who is new and what ghost
does he carry on his shoulder. Breathe.
White should not be the color
of your knuckles from the clench.
White should not be the color of power
and surrender. Of the sheet blooming
a moist rose on the El platform as Steve
runs from gang signs, turned sirens,
turned gun found in alley, turned botched
ballistics, turned funeral and Audy Homes
and Cook County Jail and Statesville. Do not
focus on the number 920—making us
the murder capitol. Do not consider 919.
Do not look into the white eyes
of the future or you will hit snooze
until the sun puts itself back to sleep.
Do not let them see the white flag
stutter in your eyes. Do not discuss
guilty until proven innocent. Wake
each kid with a hard knock to the door.
Load them all in the maroon Ronald
McDonald van. Drop them off a block
from their school. Watch them duck
out the van and hear the sliding slam
of the door. Turn off the radio they fought
over, hold tight to the steering wheel
and drive to the drop-in center, alone.
***
I organized Little Kings to essentially be a series of inter-connected, interwoven narratives with reoccurring themes, places and characters. I worked as social worker at Neon Street Center for Youth in Chicago in the early 1990’s. Neon Street, as it was called, was a group home and homeless shelter for teens. It was essentially the last stop for runaways and kids who had been kicked out of foster homes and other group homes. Most of the kids were hardened by their experiences and therefore trust had to be arduously earned via consistent actions. Trust was never given easily. One of my responsibilities was to drive an over-sized Ronald McDonalds van from the group home to a local high school. Understandably, kids did not want to be seen being dropped off from the van, so I let them out a block away from the school.
A recurring character in Little Kings was the youngest person on my caseload—Steve—who came to us at the age of fifteen. His mom was a heroin addict and his father was abusive. He had been kicked out of a high school on the south side of Chicago just before landing with us and I initially enrolled him at Senn High School, which was fairly close to our drop-in center. I remember taking Steve there to get registered and he said he’d be fine there because of the gang graffiti he saw on the lockers. Steve regularly got into trouble at Senn. After several visits with the principal, I was told he was being expelled.
My shift as at Neon Street was from 7:00am to 3:00pm Tuesday through Saturday each week. Steve was not the only one on my caseload who regularly got in trouble, so Tuesday mornings were usually full of unpleasant, distressing updates from the overnight staff. In anticipation, I would say a small prayer each morning before hitting the button for the fourth floor, “If Steve didn’t kill anyone, it will be ok.” One Sunday morning, I received a call that Steve, then sixteen, did indeed kill someone—a 16-year-old girl who attended Senn High School. It was one of 920 murders in Chicago that year. Steve later explained to me that he had shot up in the air to avoid getting jumped as an L train was coming into the station and the bullet ricocheted. Interacting with Steve’s overwhelmed public defender and seeing Steve earn the 17th birthday “gift” of being transferred from a juvenile detention center to one of the most notorious jails in America, I learned a powerful lesson: if you are poor and Black in America, you are guilty until proven innocent. Steve was locked up for months before his trial, before he was found guilty of first degree murder.
I decided to end this poem on the word “alone” to let the reader know that in spite of all the craziness, the intensity of this job, there was a sense of belonging the narrator felt with the young people he was charged with looking after.
A former Chicago social worker, Peter Kahn is a founding member of the London poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen. He has twice been commended 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, Peter is co-founder of the London Teenage Poetry Slam and also founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths University. He holds an MA in English Education and an MFA in Creative Writing. 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.
Little Kings is available to purchase here
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