Sunday, April 15, 2018

Paschal Moon: All these liberations


Today’s entries for National Poetry Month come from Audre Lorde. Early on Lorde found poetry her channel for communicating the complexities of being as intersectional as you can get: American-born to black Caribbean parents, lesbian, wife, activist, mother—basically an outsider no matter where she found herself at any given time. This may have been a reason why she continually defined herself in terms only of herself. 


In high school in New York City, Lorde participated in poetry workshops run by the Harlem Writers Guild, which she described as not accepting her because she was “both crazy and queer.”

At age 20, in 1954, she spent a year studying at the National University of Mexico; she returned to New York and graduated from Hunter College. She embarked on an academic career, teaching and writing, drawing on her experience as being “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” She held that binary divisions of male and female are simplistic, and that, while feminists have found it necessary to present a united front, there are many subdivisions of women.

Lorde’s poetry ranges everywhere she did; I’ll give you a couple of examples.

“Hanging Fire”

I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me   
the boy I cannot live without   
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before morning
and momma's in the bedroom   
with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance   
in time for the next party   
my room is too small for me   
suppose I die before graduation   
they will sing sad melodies   
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do   
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom   
with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think   
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team   
my marks were better than his   
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow   
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom   
with the door closed.

“Who Said It Was Simple”

There are so many roots to the tree of anger   
that sometimes the branches shatter   
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march   
discussing the problematic girls   
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes   
a waiting brother to serve them first   
and the ladies neither notice nor reject   
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   
But I who am bound by my mirror   
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex

and sit here wondering   
which me will survive   
all these liberations.


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