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Celebrated with some Jamaican Blue Mountain from Old City Coffee in my trusty Queen & Rook mug!

I wish I could remember
I said to Pete and Danny 
just when I stopped
being cute. 

It was a simple truth.
Unfortunately, shifting bodies don’t come equipped with
an engine light standard,
prepped to instantly flick on to warn of such looming transitions. 

One day, adorable soft chocolate skin
morphed into something
intense, something
bitter, something
pure.

--from "We Can't Afford To Be Innocent"

A mixed-race child of the ’80s, Martin Wiley grew up confronting and embracing a world as mixed and confused as he was, surrounded by beautiful words one minute and screamed at with hate the next. A long- time activist, spoken-word artist, and slam poet, he earned his MFA from Rutgers University-Camden, where he was a Rutgers University Fellow. He had begun to see himself as a “recovering poet” but his children’s growing love of words dragged him, mostly happily, off the wagon. Martin is the Coordinator of the Writing Center at Arcadia University. As much as possible, however, his focus remains on his wife Christy and their kids Thalie and Elio.

His work has appeared in journals like Apiary, Philadelphia Stories, The Northern Virginia Review, The Northridge Review, Conspire, and others. His second book, a "novel in poetic form" titled When Did We Stop Being Cute?, was released by CavanKerry Press in April. His first book, a chapbook titled Just/More, was released in January 2022 from Finishing Line Press.

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Reviews of When Did We Stop Being Cute?:

Rhythmic, musical, and at times nostalgic for a past that never was, When Did We Stop Being Cute? is a piercing view into the life of a young, mixed-race man as he processes his world and his grief with nuance, biting humor, and brutal honesty, using the microcosms of a school, a deli, and a neighborhood to examine the fraught experiences of minorities in America.

—Jeni McFarland, author of The House of Deep Water

An artist tells us who they are through their work. At times this telling is subtle, and then there are times it is bold and brazen. In Martin Wiley’s When Did We Stop Being Cute? the theme of ‘coming of age’ is turned on its head. This transition from boyhood to adolescence for a young black male from a mixed racial background is fraught with peril, substance dependency, and difficult choices. First kisses with pep rally backdrops are juxtaposed with wanting “to / drown // in the miracle of / my own survival.”

These poems reveal a truth that we should be honored to witness. The lies that America tells itself about the serenity and safety of the American suburb are laid bare for all to see. The false bravado of empty masculinity is examined and left wanting.

—DuiJi Mshinda, poet and author of Traces of Infinity

[Martin Wiley] locates a voice capable of harmonizing with the unresolved and fragmented parts of his life, remixing them to make a music that is as humorously insightful as it is angry, as generous as it is serious. I urge you to listen.

—Nico Amador, author of Anzaldúa Poetry Prize-winning Flower Wars (from the foreword)

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