In Knowledge of Young Boys

Toi Derricotte23 April 09 http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_286/1215259312BwREj8.jpg

In Knowledge of Young Boys

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i knew you before you had a mother,

when you were newtlike, swimming,

a horrible brain in water.

i knew you when your connections

belonged only to yourself,

when you had no history

to hook on to,

barnacle,

when you had no sustenance of metal

when you had no boat to travel

Continue……

when you stayed in the same

place, treading the question;

i knew you when you were all

eyes and a cocktail,

blank as the sky of a mind,

a root, neither ground nor placental;

not yet

red with the cut nor astonished

by pain, one terrible eye

open in the center of your head

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Continue……

In Knowledge of Young Boys

to night, turning, and the stars

blinked like a cat. we swam

in the last trickle of champagne

before we knew breastmilk—we

shared the night of the closet,

the parasitic

closing on our thumbprint,

we were smudged in a yellow book.

son, we were oak without

mouth, uncut, we were

brave before memory.http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20637

In Knowledge of Young Boys

Toi DerricotteToi Derricotte was born in Hamtramck, Michigan, in 1941. She earned her B.A. in special education from Wayne State University and her M.A. in English literature from New York University.

Her books of poetry include Tender (1997) which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize; Captivity (1989); Natural Birth (1983); and The Empress of the Death House (1978). She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton, 1997), which won the 1998 Annisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction.

Together with Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem, a workshop retreat for black poets, in 1996.

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National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media� to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.

National Poetry Month

Presentation by Neelima

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