By Etheridge Knight

The warden said to me the other day
(innocently, I think). “Say, etheridge,
why come the black boys don’t run off
like the white boys do?”
I lowered my jaw and scratched my head
and said (innocently, I think), “Well, suh,
I ain’t for sure, but I reckon it’s cause
we ain’t got no wheres to run to.”

Born in Mississippi, Etheridge Knight grew up in Indianapolis. Given a twenty-year prison sentence in 1960, Knight wrote for the prison newspaper. He was released on parole in 1968 and ended up teaching at various Universities. Knight once wrote:

“I died in Korea from a shrapnel wound and narcotics resurrected me. I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life.”