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.