Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Genesis
1
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Cell Song
He Sees through Stone
The Idea of Ancestry
On the Yard
A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison
Haiku
For Freckle-Faced Gerald
The Warden Said to Me the Other Day
My Life, the Quality of Which
A Poem for Black Relocation Centers
2
You Are
The Violent Space
A Poem for a Certain Lady on Her 33rd Birthday
The Stretching of the Belly
As You Leave Me
No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night
Upon Your Leaving
Feeling Fucked Up
Indiana Haiku—2
Vigo County
The Penal Farm
Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis
Indianapolis War Memorial
Harlem
For Langston Hughes
Welcome Back, Mr. Knight: Love of My Life
Another Poem for Me
The Bones of My Father
Evolutionary Poem No. 1
Evolutionary Poem No. 2
3
A Poem for Myself
Report to the Mother
The Sun Came
It Was a Funky Deal
Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine
For Malcolm, a Year After
A Poem of Attrition
For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide
For Mary Ellen McAnally
The Keeping of a Promise
Ilu, the Talking Drum
Poem for the Liberation of Southern Africa
Television Speaks
On Watching Politicians Perform at Martin Luther King's Funeral
4
A Fable
Memo #9
Memo #32
Memo #2
Memo #5
Portrait of Mary
My Uncle is My Honor and a Guest in My House
I and Your Eyes
On the Birth of a Black / Baby / Boy
Birthday Poem
Cop-Out Session
A Poem to Galway Kinnell
Missouri Haiku
Boone County
Outside St. Louis
Clay County
Mizzu
Indiana Haiku
Riverside Park
Indiana Avenue, 1949
Indianapolis Winter, 1973
We Free Singers Be
Talking in the Woods with Karl Amorelli
Boston 5:00 A.M.—10/74
A Poem on the Middle East “Peace Process”
Haiku 1
Memo #43
And Tell Me Poet, Can Love Exist in Slavery?
Green Grass and Yellow Balloons
Belly Song
Apology for Apostasy?
Con / Tin / U / Way / Shun Blues
5
On Seeing the Black Male as # 1 Sex Object in America
Last Words by “Slick”
Haiku
Genesis 11
Eat Helen B Happy
Various Protestations from Various People
At a VA Hospital in the Middle of the United States of America: An Act in a Play
On the Projects Playground
Circling the Daughter
For a Brookline Lady I Love
Once on a Night in the Delta: A Report from Hell
A Black Poet Leaps to His Death
Rehabilitation & Treatment in the Prisons of America
