Malcolm X, “For Malcolm, a Year After”
The title refers to one year after the assassination of noted civil rights leader Malcolm X. The opening line addresses him as Red, the nickname he was known as long before he adopted his more famous pseudonym.
Gerald, “For Freckle-Faced Gerald”
Gerald is a sixteen-year-old black boy who is raped in prison. The text indicates that in a way, this circumstance was predetermined for him by the society he was born into. The violence of the narrative is not explicit, but implied through imagery.
Unnamed Inmate, “He Sees Through Stone”
This is another poem set in prison, but in this case the inmate is much older than Gerald, more experienced and cunning. Rather than a tale of violence enacted upon the innocent, this prisoner sits quietly against the exterior wall smoking a pipe and responding to the approaching threat of “black cats” circling him with a look that informing them he already knows this drill from long experience.
Etheridge Knight, “Poem for Myself”
This appears to be an autobiographical poem as the first line has the narrator saying he was born in Mississippi, as was Knight himself. It is a story of experience that takes a young man from walking barefoot through Dixie to visiting Detroit and Chicago and New York. In the end, however, he claims to be the same as that young boy back in Mississippi and that he will return there to die.
