“Missing You, Metropolis” By Gary Jackson is What The Game Been Missing

A lot of us here at Black Nerd Problems met through the slam poetry community and come from a writing background in poetry. A lot of us also hate poetry (and people, let’s not forget people). Which is to say that when it comes to books of poetry, it’s going to take a lot to get us interested (or maybe that’s just me). I was on on Tumblr one day (doing what real thugs do) reblogging pictures of otters aka the lawd’s work, when I saw a post by McClain where she was reblogging lines of poetry and talking about this book “Missing You, Metropolis” by this dude Gary Jackson. She told me about it so I decided to check it out (McClain isn’t wrong on many things. [Don’t tell her I said that]). I found a piece of his someone posted on Tumblr. That shit said, “How The Unstoppable Juggernaut Makes a Living after Retirement”. I read the first verse Cain Marko sits in the corner of Harry’s Hideout, arm-wrestling men forty years younger, smashing each hand to ancient wood, pining for heroes The poem goes on to describe Cain remembering his days of old fighting heroes and even references the time Spider-Man encased him in cement. That happened in an old school back issue of Spider-Man my nerd. THAT’S AUTHENTIC SHIT MY DUDE. For nerds, that reference was the equivalent of still having the New Era sticker under the brim of your new fifty (fiddy) cap. I got done reading the piece and felt like Will Smith in “I am Legend” when he dropped the top on his whip riding around on a Whole Foods run and…