title: Darling: New and Selected Poems
author:  Jackie Kay 
description: Identity in the former British Empire is less fluid than here, so when an unmarried Scottish woman gives birth to a child with a Nigerian father, the child is considered black. Adopted by a childless couple of radical politics, Kay grew up with higher awareness of the complexities of racial and cultural identity than perhaps any other prominent poet from her island possesses. Her earliest book, excerpted here, is the stunningly well-wrought verse play The Adoption Papers (1992), whose most endearing scene shows her adoptive mother, a Communist, hiding Marx but leaving out the bust of Bobbie Burns. Like her great Scottish forebear, Kay is a poet of the common person, who in this multicultural age on the British isle is more likely to be a mixed-race woman than a lusty, populist white male. Kays work doesnt stop with autobiography; her later poems embrace other marginalized people in stories of homeless teens and rejected queens, of the aged and the dying. Her grand, embracing spirit should be better known in the U.S. --Patricia Monaghan
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  “Did you fantasize about . . . kissing me?”
  
  
  Jacqueline closed her eyes, her heart pounding so loudly, she could hear it
  echoing in the hallway.
  
  
  “Did you?” Kay asked in a whisper.
  
  
  “Yes,” Jacqueline breathed. She felt Kay’s hand touch her stomach, felt it
  travel higher.
  
  
  “Did you fantasize about touching me?”
  
  
  Jacqueline felt Kay’s thumb move between her breasts and she barely managed to
  swallow back her moan.
  
  
  “Jackie, did you?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  Kay moved closer still, their thighs brushing. Kay’s hand trembled as she
  moved it higher, between Jackie’s breasts, then higher. She lightly rubbed her
  thumb over the pulse pounding so in Jackie’s neck.
  
  
  “Did you think about me touching you?” Kay whispered.
  
  
  “Kay—”
  
  
  “Tell me. Did you, Jackie?”
  
  
  Jacqueline could stand it no more. She grasped Kay’s arms, moving her against
  the wall, pressing her body flush against Kay, holding her there. Their eyes
  locked together