Poetry

image copyright Robin Davis





Selected favorite poems by various talented women

Ballad Of The Brown Girl

I've got two
hundred
dollars
the girl said
on her head
she wore a
school cap
---blue---
& brown she
looked no
more than
ten
but a freshman in
college?
well, hard
to tell--

I'll give you
'three hundred'
'fo' hunna'
'five wads of jack'
but "mrs. whatsyourname . . ."
the doctor says
with impatiently tolerant
eyes
you should want
it
you know . . .
talk it over with
your folks
you may be
surprised. . . .

the next morning
her slender
neck broken
her note short
and of cyrptic
collegiate
make---

just

"Question--

did ever brown
daughter to black
father a white
baby
take--?"

- Alice Walker



Ballade

Lone am I, and would be
Lone has my sweet love left me
Lone, without lord or friend
Lone, grieving and saddened
Lone, without ease I languish
Lone as a soul in anguish
Lone, since my love I lack

Lone am I, at door or casement
Lone, in this corner pent
Lone, on my tears feeding
Lone, whether calm or grieving
Lone, never so chagrined
Lone, in my closet confined
Lone, since my love I lack

Lone am I, wherever I stray
Lone, when I walk or stay
Lone, as none to earth's ends
Lone, abandoned by friends
Lone am I, never so low
Lone, as my tears flow
Lone, since my love I lack

Envoi:

Prince, my grief is only dawning
Lone am I, and overcome by mourning
Lonely I wait, in sombre grey not black
Lone, since my love I lack

- Christine de Pisan



An Ancient Song Of A Woman Of Fez

I see a man who is dull
and boring like no one else.

He is heavier than massive mountains.
When he laughs he shakes the plains of Gharb,
when he cries the coastal cities tremble.

To look at an ugly man
gives me a headache.

- Anonymous: traditional, Morocco



Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

- Maya Angelou



Cythera

Small rivulets ran about her feet
and backwards to the ocean.
I knew who she was,
but she walked through the waves
and sat down beside me.
I stayed very still.
She said that it was hot.
I didn't say anything, but I thought
to myself I would make a poem
out of this, of how I sat on a beach
and gossiped with a goddess, and of
how kind she was and friendly.
Her movements were slow. 'She's lazy,'
I decided. 'Olympians have the time
and are therefore unhurried.'
I wondered how I looked, but she was
combing her hair. I waited quietly.
And then she smiled. I was
very ashamed. She was my friend
and I had made her a goddess:
that shamed me.

- Suniti Namjoshi



Eve Meets Medusa

Medusa. Sit down. Take
the weight off your snakes. We have
a lot in common. Snakes, I mean.

Tell me, can you really turn men
to stone with a look? Do you
think, if I had a perm--
maybe not.

Don't you think
Perseus was
a bit of a coward? not even
to look you in the face

you were beautiful when you
were a moon goddess, before
Athene changed your looks
through jealousy

I can't see what's wrong
with making love
in a temple, even
if it was her temple

it's a good mask; you must
feel safe and loving
behind it

you must feel very powerful

tell me, what conditioner do you use?

- Michelene Wandor



A Woman's Issue

The woman in the spiked device
that locks around the waist between
the legs, with holes in it line a tea strainer
is Exhibit A.

The woman in black with a net window
to see through and a four-inch
wooden peg jammed up
between her legs so she can't be raped
is Exhibit B.

Exhibit C is the young girl
dragged into the bushes by the midwives
and made to sing while they scrape the flesh
from between her legs, then tie her thighs
till she scabs over and is called healed.
Now she can be married.
For each childbirth they'll cut her
open, then sew her up.
Men like tight women.
The ones that die are carefully buried.

The next exhibit lies flat on her back
while eighty men a night
move through her, ten an hour.
She looks at the ceiling, listens
to the door open and close.
A bell keeps ringing.
Nobody knows how she got here.

You'll notice that what they all have in common
is between the legs. Is this
why wars are fought?
Enemy territory, no man's
land, to be entered furtively,
fenced, owned but never surely,
scene of these desperate forays
at midnight, captures
and sticky murders, doctor's rubber gloves
greasy with blood, flesh made inert, the surge
of your own uneasy power.

This is no museum.
Who invented the word love?

- Margaret Atwood



I Said To Poetry

I said to Poetry: 'I'm finished
with you.'
Having almost to die
before some weird light
comes creeping through
is no fun.
'No thank you, Creation,
no muse need apply.
I'm out for good times --
at the very least,
some painless convention.

Poetry laid back
and played dead
until this morning.
I wasn't sad or anything,
only restless.

Poetry said: 'You remember
the desert, and how glad you were
that you have an eye
to see it with? You remember
that, if ever so slightly?'
I said: 'I didn't hear that.
Besides, it's five o'clock in the a.m.
I'm not getting up
in the dark
to talk to you.'

Poetry said: 'But think about the time
you saw the moon
over that small canyon
that you liked much better
than the grand one -- and how surprised you were
that the moonlight was green
and you still had
one good eye
to see it with.

Think of that!'

'I'll join the church!' I said,
huffily, turning my face to the wall.
'I'll learn how to pray again!'

'Let me ask you,' said Poetry.
'When you pray, what do you think
you'll see?'

Poetry had me.

'There's no paper
in this room,' I said.
'And that new pen I bought
makes a funny noise.'

'Bullshit,' said Poetry.
'Bullshit,' said I.

- Alice Walker



Lilith Re-Tells Esther's Story

the world rustles for Esther
in her best read weave

only nine chapters, she has
little time to coin a magic mine

meanwhile, back at the palace, King Ahasuerus
feasts the men, while meanwhile
benind the palace, Queen Vashti
feasts the women.

Vashti is summoned to the king's presence
but being rosy with the jokes
of women, she puts her foot down
fuck off, you wally (or some Old Testament
equivalent), I won't be shown off like
a prize cow this time

the lads, of course, don't take to that at all
because everyone knows that once a queen
sets a bad eg
any woman could take it into her
head to disobey
her lord and master

get rid of Vashti, advise
the princes, fear seaming their pores,
replace her with another -- after all,
every man
should bear rule
in his own house

so King A orders a load
of virgins (what's so special
about virgins?) from whom
to chose a replacement
for Vashti

meanwhile, back in the ghetto
Mordecai, the Jew, hears of this and sends
his cousin Hadassah (Esther to you)
along with the other virgins, and lo,
she is chosen with a select few
for further tests (the king conveniently
unaware of her ethnic origins)

a year of 'purification'; oil of
myrrh, sweet odours, and one by one,
in turn, in turn, the young women
are set before the king
for him to try
till he gets bored

Esther, however, does not bore him
at all, and as her reward, King A
sets the crown upon her head
and her body in his bed

Mordecai meanwhile hovers round the gate

also meanwhile, a bad man
called Haman
becomes King A's right-hand man,
a misnomer for such a sinister man
who likes all
to bow down
before him

Mordecai, always a meanwhile man,
refuses to bow, and in revenge Haman
decides to kill all
the Jews (where
have we heard that one since?)

anyway, so the long and short of it is that
Esther so continues to please King A
with her courage and beauty
that Haman is sussed out
and hanged
the Jews are saved
and Mordecai rises
to be second-in-command
to King A

there is something missing
from this story:
someone
somewhere
doesn't bother to say
whether Esther
actually liked
King A

- Michelene Wandor



We Have A Beautiful Mother

We have a beautiful
mother
Her hills
are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
hills.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her oceans
are wombs
Her wombs
oceans.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her teeth
the white stones
at the edge
of the water
the summer
grasses
her plentiful
hair.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her green lap
immense
Her brown embrace
eternal
Her blue body
everything
we know.

- Alice Walker



If you are so inclined, go to the Lesbian Poetry Page



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