By Audre Lorde
Tag: audre lorde
Featured Poem: Burning the Water Hyacinth
By Audre Lord
We flame the river
to keep the boat paths open
your eyes eat my shadow
at the light line
touchless
completing each other’s need
to yearn
to settle into hunger
faceless
a waning moon.
Plucking desire
from my palms
like the firehairs of a cactus
I know this appetite
the greed of a poet
or an empty woman
trying to touch
what matters.
Featured Poem: Out of the Wind
By Audre Lorde
For the days when the coffee grounds refuse to settle
and the last toothpick rolls into a crack on the floor
and all the telephone messages are from enemies
or for other people only
and the good old days
lie
between pages of books
we have already written
for the acorn of fear in each April
will this be the year
earth refuses
to forgive us with a blush of green
for the weary assumptions
of next winter’s chill
and for silent days inbetween
your face
mingled in tulips
after brief rain.
Featured Poem: Stations
By Audre Lord
Some women love
to wait
for life for a ring
in the June light for a touch
of the sun to heal them for another
woman’s voice to make them whole
to untie their hands
put words in their mouths
form to their passages sound
to their screams for some other sleeper
to remember their future their past
Some woman wait for their right
train in the wrong station
in the alleys of morning
for the noon to holler
the night come down
Some women wait for love
to rise up
the child of their promise
to gather from earth
what they do not plant
to claim pain for labor
to become
the tip of an arrow to aim
at the harvest of now
but it never stays.
Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcome
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted
to visit
to be repeated
Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care
Some women wait for something
to change and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves
Featured Poem: Naming the Stories
By Audre Lord
Otter and quaking aspens
the set of a full cleansing moon
castle walls crumble
in silence
visions trapped by the wild stone
lace up the sky pale electric fire
no sound
but a soft expectation of birds
calling the night home.
Half asleep bells
mark a butterfly’s birth
over the rubble
I crawl into dawn
corn woman bird girl sister
calls from the edge of a desert
where it is still night
to tell me her story
survival.
Rock speaks a rooster language
and the light is broken
clear.
Featured Poem: A Question of Climate
By Audre Lorde
I learned to be honest
the way I learned to swim
dropped into the inevitable
my father’s thumbs in my hairless armpits
about to give way
I am trying
to surface carefully
remembering
the water’s shadow-legged musk
cannons of salt exploding
my nostrils’ rage
and for years
my powerful breast stroke
was a declaration of war.
Featured Poem: Learning to Write
By Audre Lord
Is the alphabet responsible
for the book
in which it is written
that makes me peevish and nasty
and wish I were dumb again?
We practiced drawing our letters
digging into the top of the desk
and old Sister Eymard
rapped our knuckles
until they bled
she was the meanest of all
and we knew she was crazy
but none of the grownups
would listen to us
until she died in a madhouse.
I am a bleak heroism of words
the refuse
to be buried alive
with the liars.