"Poets must teach what they know, if we are all to continue being."
-- Audre Lorde
We're four days into Pride Month, an international celebration of achievements of the LGBTQ+ community, and for today's Poetry Pride Friday we feature a poem by Audre Lorde (1934–1992), the Caribbean-American poet, essayist, feminist, lesbian icon, and human rights activist.
Audre Lorde was awarded the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit in 1991 and served as New York State Poet under the auspices of the New York State Writers Institute until her death in 1992. (Read Gov. Mario Cuomo's proclamation)
Lorde grew up in Manhattan where she attended Catholic school. She loved to read poetry, often reciting whole poems or individual lines to communicate with people. When she could no longer find poems that expressed her feelings, she started writing her own poetry. Her first poem to be published appeared in Seventeen magazine when she was still in high school.
She self-described as "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." Lorde worked intensively with women of color in many different countries. A phone call in 1980 with her friend Barbara Smith (who later served on the Albany City Council) led to the formation of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, a press which concentrates exclusively on publishing and distributing works of women of color from various communities.
Movement Song
by Audre Lorde
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
Source: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997)
We support local, independent booksellers. You can purchase Audre Lorde's books at The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: https://www.bhny.com/book/9780393319729
The Audre Lorde Project: https://alp.org/
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