by Dennis Scott That August the birds kept away from the village, afraid: people were hungry. The phoenix hid at the sun’s center and stared down at the Banker’s house, which was plump and factual, like zero. |
by Pamela Mordecai Shit in my mouth. He makes my woman put her bottom in my face and push her doo- doo in between my lips. When she stops he says, "More! You black bitch, more! Shove it out till it bung a clog inside his throat or I will strip your back until it makes a bleeding pair with his." |
by Yusef Komunyakaa The cry I bring down from the hills belongs to a girl still burning inside my head. At daybreak she burns like a piece of paper. She burns like foxfire in a thigh-shaped valley. A skirt of flames dances around her at dusk. |
by Mzwandile Matiwana I say: "every drop of my ink will curse your balls" And my children of my children will know peace to mix not with your progeny |
by Omotara James When they send the robot to replace me, do not be gentle with it. Place these chords where its heart chakra should be. Do not speak to it of a fountain— tell it, in the middle of its life, there will be a flower: a blooming petalled trauma. |
by Derek Walcott Merely to name them is the prose Of diarists, to make you a name For readers who like travellers praise Their beds and beaches as the same; But islands can only exist If we have loved in them. |
by Jamaal May In the beginning there was the war. The war said let there be war and there was war. The war said let there be peace and there was war. |
by June Jordan A few years back and they told me Black means a hole where other folks got brain/it was like the cells in the heads of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious Jensen Lapse, remember? |
by Warsan Shire Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes the men - they come with keys, and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers. |
by Tyehimba Jess My God is the living God, God of the impertinent exile. An outcast who carved me into an outcast carved by sheer and stony will to wander the desert in search of deliverance the way a mother hunts for her wayward child. |
by Rethabile Masilo Tonight, I go to bed with images of Maria Conçepcion in my head, and Walcott beckoning from the edge of the sea with honey dripping from the tips of his fingers. |
by Kwame Dawes I learned a sports car, red, muscular open roads, a fit body, a smile, are reliable as a visa, a path to understand the tears of a woman, as I understood menstruation or perms: their business is mostly inexplicable, crazy, and nothing to do with me. I learned to be able to say, "You did not come? Not sure why— I did. Try harder, next time." |
by Geoffrey Philp Years later, my father would try to explain, why after shoveling dirt for three hours in the vault of a neighbor’s son, he’d abandoned me in an empty grave. And no matter how much I wailed, "Pa, the duppies are coming after me," he calmly chiseled the boy’s name... |
by Kamau Brathwaite on the first day of yr death it is quiet it is dormant like a doormat no one-foot touch its welcome. its dust on the floor is not disturb nor are the sleeping spirits of this house |
by Chris Abani It’s like flying in your dreams, she said. You empty Yourself out and just lift off. Soar. It’s like that. |
by Ladan Osman Tonight is a drunk man, his dirty shirt. There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins, offering to help me unload my plastics. |
by January Gill O'Neil Make peace with what cannot be seen and what you do not know. Try not to enter the pond scum, the algae that swirls in dark, empty rooms called water. |
by Nikki Giovanni I came to the crowd seeking friends I came to the crowd seeking love I came to the crowd for understanding I found you. |
by Margaret Walker I want to write I want to write the songs of my people. I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark. I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn throats. |
by Ishmael Reed Being a colored poet Is like going over Niagara Falls in a Barrel. |
by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. |
by Claudia Rankine Some years there exists a wanting to escape— you, floating above your certain ache— still the ache coexists. Call that the immanent you— |
by Dudley Randall Musing on roses and revolutions, I saw night close down on the earth like a great dark wing, and the lighted cities were like tapers in the night, and I heard the lamentations of a million hearts regretting life and crying for the grave, and I saw the Negro lying in the swamp with his face blown off, and in the northern cities with his manhood maligned and felt the writhing of his viscera like that of the hare hunted down or the bear at bay, and I saw men working and taking no joy in their work and embracing the hard-eyed whore with joyless excitement and lying with wives and virgins in impotence. |
by Bob Kaufman A terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs I know, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walk around in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & read great books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books of the month & have wifeys that are lousy in bed & never realize how bad my writing is because i am poor & symbolize myself. |
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