Poem: “Coal” by Audre Lorde

1 Posted by - February 17, 2024 - BLACK WOMEN, LATEST POSTS

Audre Lorde was a writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger .

Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing the injustices of racism, sexism, and homophobia in her poetry, and in other literary work.

Concerned with modern society’s tendency to categorize groups of people, Lorde fought the marginalization of such categories as “lesbian” and “black woman,” thereby empowering her readers to react to the prejudice in their own lives. Lorde died of liver cancer at age 58 on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix.

Coal

By Audre Lorde
I
Is the total black, being spoken
From the earth’s inside.
There are many kinds of open.
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
How a sound comes into a word, coloured
By who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open
Like a diamond on glass windows
Singing out within the crash of passing sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—
And come whatever wills all chances
The stub remains
An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue
To explode through my lips
Like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
Bedevil me.
Love is a word another kind of open—
As a diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am black because I come from the earth’s inside
Take my word for jewel in your open light.
source:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/audre-lorde

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