Hello Friends —
More of you probably know Audre Lorde from her essays, activism, or autobiography, but she was also a poet. In one of those essays, she writes, “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”*
Echoes
There is a timbre of voice
that comes from not being heard
and knowing you are not being
heard noticed only
by others not heard
for the same reason.
The flavor of midnight fruit tongue
calling your body through dark light
piercing the allure of safety
ripping the glitter of silence
around you
dazzle me with color
and perhaps I won’t notice
till after you’re gone
your hot grain smell tattooed
into each new poem resonant
beyond escape I am listening
in that fine space
between desire and always
the grave stillness
before choice.
As my tongue unravels
in what pitch
will the scream hang unsung
or shiver like lace on the borders
of never recording
which dreams heal which
dreams can kill
stabbing a man and burning his body
for cover being caught
making love to a woman
I do not know.
* Bonus Reading: The essay quoted above is “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” from Sister Outsider (1984). In a very similar substantive vein to “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” from a very different writer, see also William Faulkner’s 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.