Let us catch yo’ light-skinned ass on The Great Wall of China again.We’ll show you some real tender-headed Black boy Kung Fu; drag our knuckles across concrete riverbanks of pitch and soot to bust your bottom lip.Come clad in those ugly-ass NASCAR track pants—that tight-ass wife-beater tank top,that wide-ass grease-tinted forehead you got from Daddy.Our tiger palms will Cadillac turn on their way to slap the Black off you.We’re owed a swan kick, Jaden—owed Jackie Chan hijinks, and Bruce Li’s gi.Our single mom was meant to grindstone rusty spoonsinto mirror-cool silver. WE were meant to wax and wanein the ruby glow of lantern-lifted destiny!Those were OUR fucking forbidden fruits to foragefrom the Beijing Beverly Hill Chinaberry trees.Sure, we were only twelve. And, upon reflection,we can see how you would’ve been a bigger box office draw.But can you blame us for the jealousy?Do you have any idea how important Kung Fu is to broke Black kids?Aching to pinch bullets from the breezeor weave some semblance of control within the fibers of our futures.When you air-balled, breakdanced, let that giggling girlpluck strands from your hair; when castor oil drooledfrom your nunchuck braids onto the pavement,when bullies stove your stomach in,tell us, where’d you summon those tears from?
Jaden Smith Stole Our Role in The Karate Kid
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“Jaden Smith Stole Our Role in The Karate Kid” from THE GRACE OF BLACK MOTHERS: by Martheaus Perkins.
Published by Trio House Press on July 1, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Martheaus Perkins.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Martheaus Perkins is a first-generation college graduate and the son of a single Black mother. He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers (Trio House Press) and co-editor of BRAWL. His writing has appeared in BWR, diode, Obsidian, HAD, and Beloit. The name “Martheaus” is a collection of each woman who raised him: “Mar-” was his grandmother, “-Thea-” is his mother, and “-us” represents the aunties who created the name. Find him at: martheausperkins.com.
Carried within Martheaus Perkins' The Grace of Black Mothers are the many howls of lost children and their martyrized mothers. This debut collection brings a lyrical reckoning on behalf of dismembered dreams by boldly finding grace through our Black mothers, aunties, and grannies. The work invites the reader into a yard where "whisper-thin soul-jazz drips over America" to flip through a Nile-long family album. Mamie Till-Mobley, Sybrina Fulton, Harriet Tubman, and the author's own mothers guide us as we "wander streets like cartographers of poverty" and hold our "promises to come home." Perkins shows his craft by shapeshifting through fighting game menus, optometry charts, screenplays, pirate codes, social media threads, and forms that embody dreams themselves. The Grace of Black Mothers is a collection drenched in complexity and nuance: homemade heroes and villains, justice and fabrication, wit and risk, resurrection and erasure.
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