LGBTQ Poetry Month III: Audre Lorde
Movement Song
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.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992), 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', was born in Harlem to Caribbean parents. Lorde spent her life fighting for feminism, civil rights, gay rights, and most of all for the intersection between all of these - 'I am defined as other in every group I'm part of,' she declared. She was almost legally blind and battled breast cancer for 14 years, in the last year of which she became New York Poet Laureate before she passed away aged 58.