#BlackPoetry

Practice Makes People by Amanda Gorman

The making of plans, When this is over; The We can't wait, Really our knuckles rapping Against the future, sounding Out what lies beneath its hull. But tomorrow isn't revealed, Rather rendered, refined. Wrought. Remember that fate isn't fought Against. It is fought for. Again & again.

Maybe there is no fresh wisdom, Just old woes, New words to name them by & the will to act. We've seen life lurching back in stops & starts Like a wet-born thing learning to walk. The air charged & changed. Us, charged & changed. A yoked-out eternity For that needle to pierce our arm. At last: a pain we asked for. Yes, it is enough to be moved By what we might be.

— Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

Sights and Sounds by Benjamin Zephaniah

There are More than Six thousand Different Languages Spoken On Earth.

There is No person On Earth Who can speak Them all.

Every person On Earth Could learn To speak Any language On Earth.

There are Some languages That are not Spoken.

Languages Like people Have family trees.

Languages Like people Are all precious.

Languages Like people Can disappear.

Languages are Like people

Respect your tongue.

Sign languages Are Crucial

Protect your hands.

— Wicked World! by Benjamin Zephaniah (Page 68 - 69)

My Father as Cartographer by Natasha Tretheway

In dim light now, his eyes straining to survey the territory: here is the country of Loss, its colony Grief; the great continent Desire and its borderland Regret;

vast, unfathomable water, an archipelago—the tiny islands of Joy, untethered, set adrift. At the bottom of the map his legend and cartouche, the measures of distance, key

to the symbols marking each known land. What's missing is the traveler's warning at the margins: a dragon— its serpentine signature—monstrous as a two-faced daughter.

— Monument by Natasha Trethewey (Page 167)

Mothers by Nikki Giovanni

the last time i was home to see my mother we kissed exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around us and read separate books

i remember the first time i consciously saw her we were living in a three room apartment on burns avenue

mommy always sat in the dark i don't know how i knew that but she did

that night i stumbled into the kitchen maybe because i've always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed she was sitting on a chair the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through tiny window panes she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black

i'm sure i just hung there by the door i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady she was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by "come here" she said "i'll teach you a poem: i see the moon the moon sees me god bless the moon and god bless me" i taught that to my son who recited it for her just to say we must learn to bear the pleasures as we have borne the pains

— Love poems by Nikki Giovanni (Page 47 - 48)

The Trees by Jericho Brown

In my front yard live three crape myrtles, crying trees We once called them, not the shadiest but soothing During a break from work in the heat, their cool sweat

Falling into us. I don't want to make more of it. I'd like to let these spindly things be Since my gift for transformation here proves

Useless now that I know everyone moves the same Whether moving in tears or moving To punch my face. A crape myrtle is

A crape myrtle. Three is a family. It is winter. They are bare. It's not that I love them Every day. It's that I love them anyway.

— The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Page 19)

bare by Danez Smith

for you i'd send my body to battle my body, let my blood sing of tearing

itself apart, hollow cords of white knights' intravenous joust.

love, i want & barely know how to do much else. don't speak to me

about raids you could loose on me the clan of rebel cells who thirst

to watch their home burn. love let me burn if it means you

& i have one night with no barrier but skin. this isn't about danger

but about faith, about being wasted on your name. if love is a room

of broken glass, leave me to dance until my feet are memory.

if love is a hole wide enough to be God's mouth, let me plunge

into that holy dark & forget the color of light. love, stay

in me until our bodies forget what divides us, until your hands

are my hands & your blood is my blood & your name

is my name & his & his

— Don't Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith (Page 37)

The Morning After by L. Lamar Wilson

willows welcome fog's embrace: its shadow a lone silver glove a shroud

— Sacrilegion by L. Lamar Wilson (Poetry series -- #16) (Page 56)

HeLa by Jericho Brown for Henrietta Lacks

I won't die. I keep white men up at night. I come from the deepest basin they know. They want to watch me grow so they took me from Mama. When they hold me close, it's always so cold, but when Sister came to see me the other day, she kissed me & called me beautiful & I was warm again, like it always was with Mama, just for a little while. Yemoja olodo awoye Yemoja...

I—two, one hundred, three million, legion, spawn of gall, glory of silt gone sour—make the slack-jawed bow & wish they could drink from my ever-after. Now these men have brought women friends to look at me. They say I'm getting stronger every day. They want me to tell them my secrets, but I don't know what they mean. How can I explain who I am if they can't see, after looking at me? They call me HeLa. Healer. Mama would be proud to know we got healing in us. I hope she understands I didn't want to go... Yemoja Orisha Orisha Yemoja fun me lowo. Asé. Asé.

— The Tradition by Jericho Brown (Page 27)

little prayer by Danez Smith

let ruin end here

let him find honey where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion's cage & find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing & if not let it be

— Don't Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith (Page 81)