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This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» , In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? Maybe where all poems live: in doubt, shame, fear, prayer and ecstasy. Maybe they live in the part of me that still sees the Rickey, pubescent, gap-toothed, shy to smile, shy to speak, not man-enough, not black-enough, desiring, but who thought to be desired was outside him. Or that they live in this Rickey, older, who smiles, speaks, is man-enough, whatever “man” means, is black-enough, whatever “black” means, desires, apparently is desired, is desired. Wherever the overlap is is where Rickey (his poems) lives. But poems also move. The [...]