A Conversation with Myself

Books by Etheridge Knight

Poems from Prison / Black Voices from Prison / Belly Song and Other Poems

Born of a Woman / Essential Etheridge Knight

* * * * *

A Conversation with Myself

By Etheridge Knight

What am I

doing here

in these missouri hills

hitch / hiking these hi / ways

where farmers

fondle their guns

and eye my back

the cars zoom by

zoom zoom zoom

and disappear around the bend

I sit

on the abutment of a small bridge

and wait

reading mari evans’ book

below me a brook gurgles along

a field of corn, green waving in the wind

five cows stand swishing their tails

in the shade

of three cedars

a hi / way cop passes

and

slows down

peering in his rear / view mirror

I clutch

I am a Black Woman

a security blanket

I turn and show my teeth

and

the book

the cop gasses the engine

and disappears

I scramble

down

* * * * *

Source: Callaloo. 19.4 (Fall 1996): 940–46

posted 18 December 2005

Etheridge Knight, born in Corinth, Mississippi, perhaps will be remembered for his excellence in blending oral and poetic traditions as he tried to create works that confronted personal and social dimensions with relentless honesty. Some critics praised him on his ability to render the genre of the toast as high art. He began writing poetry in 1963 while he was incarcerated at Indiana prison. His books include Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Belly Song and Other Poems, Born of a Woman, and the Essential Etheridge Knight. Knight received NEA grants in 1972 and 1980 and won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. His work is included in such anthologies as Dices and Black Bones, Norton Anthology of American Poets, New Black Voices, and Black Poets. Etheridge died in 1991.

Source: Black Southern Voices, Edited by John Oliver Killens and Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

Read also Bio at Poets.org