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Good Grief by Amanda Gorman

The origin of the word trauma Is not just "wound," but "piercing" or "turning," As blades do when finding home. Grief commands its own grammar, Structured by intimacy & imagination. We often say: We are beside ourselves with grief. We can't even imagine. This means anguish can call us to envision More than what we believed was carriable Or even survivable. This is to say, there does exist A good grief.

The hurt is how we know We are alive & awake; It clears us for all the exquisite, Excruciating enormities to come. We are pierced new by the turning Forward.

All that is grave need Not be a burden, an anguish. Call it, instead, an anchor, Grief grounding us in its sea. Despair exits us the same way it enters— Turning through the mouth. Even now conviction works Strange magic on our tongues. We are built up again By what we Build/find/see/say/remember/know. What we carry means we survive, It is what survives us. We have survived us. Where once we were alone, Now we are beside ourselves. Where once we were barbed & brutal as blades, Now we can only imagine.

— Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (Page 28)

Man on the TV Say by Patricia Smith

Go. He say it simple, gray eyes straight on and watered, he say it in that machine throat they got. On the wall behind him, there's a moving picture of the sky dripping something worse than rain. Go, he say. Pick up y'all black asses and run. Leave your house with its splinters and pocked roof, leave the pork chops drifting in grease and onion, leave the whining dog, your one good watch, that purple church hat, the mirrors. Go. Uh-huh. Like our bodies got wheels and gas, like at the end of that running there's an open door with dry and song inside. He act like we supposed to wrap ourselves in picture frames, shadow boxes, and bathroom rugs, then walk the freeway, racing the water. Get on out. Can't he see that our bodies are just our bodies, tied to what we know? Go. So we'll go. Cause the man say it strong now, mad like God pointing the way outta Paradise. Even he got to know our favorite ritual is root, and that none of us done ever known a horizon, especially one that cools our dumb running, whispering urge and constant: This way. Over here.

— Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith (Page 7)

Winter Poem by Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell on my brow and i loved it so much and i kissed it and it was happy and called its cousins and brothers and a web of snow engulfed me then i reached to love them all and i squeezed them and they became a spring rain and i stood perfectly still and was a flower

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 328)

Migrations by Nikki Giovanni

When the sun returns to the arctic circle from its winter rest

The grasses sprout seducing the winged and the hoofed

Polar bears and their cubs must flee Before the ice breaks up

Although others begin a northern journey

The Snow Goose flies from the Gulf of Mexico to mate and birth her young

Two million Mongolian Gazelles move over the tundra where each gives birth at the same time defying the will of predators who would consume the gazelles' future

Though only, of course, to provide nourishment for their own young predators

Let's not judge too harshly

Salmon swim upstream jumping falls and grizzly bears

Grasshoppers ignoring the advice Of ants make music to celebrate Winter's end

Monarch butterflies leaving the safety Of Zihuatanejo forge north Beginning the longest winged journey of Spring

With only the hope of warmth and the promise of grasses They unflinchingly face: Hunger Thirst Predators Winds Rains Uncertainties

As would I For you

— Bicycles by Nikki Giovanni (Page 8)

175 by Richard Wright

Coming from the woods, A bull has a liliac sprig Dangling from a horn.

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 224)

sign post by Devorah Major

colored water quarter water purple water sugar

still water deep water salt water river

clear water ice water rain water hailing

break water hard water white water drown

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 192)

4 haiku (for Nubia) by Sonia Sanchez

1. Telephone wires sang her voice over soft sister laughter

2. you held us with summer stained smiles of hope

3. i hold your breath today. . . you sail home across the ocean

4. i see you Nubia walking your Mississippi walk God in your hands.

— Morning haiku by Sonia Sanchez (Page 19)

Man's Feet Are a Sensational Device by Marianne Moore

Rest assured that netting butterflies, Flying from mice, And crushing spiders, Is portentous cowardice. The field of moral choice affords man's Feet crackling ice To tread, and feet are A sensational device.

— The poems of Marianne Moore by Marianne Moore, Grace Schulman (Page 65)

Earth Song by Langston Hughes

It's an earth song— And I've been waiting long For an earth song. It's a spring song! I've been waiting long For a spring song: Strong as the bursting of young buds. Strong as the shoots of a new plant, Strong as the coming of the first child From its mother's womb— An earth song! A body song! A spring song! And I've been waiting long For an earth song.

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 342)

She Sees What It Sees by Patricia Smith

The eye of Hurricane Katrina passes over New Orleans.

And the levees crackled, and baptism rushed through the ward, blasting the boasts from storefronts, sweeping away the rooted, the untethered, bending doors, withering the strength of stoops. Damn!, like a mantra, drummed and constant comment on the rising drink. Shit! Skirts shamelessly hefted, pants legs ripped away, babies balanced in the air. But still, acceptance, flurries of ha ha I'll be damned, because breakage has always been backdrop and water—well, water sears through them, drenches their white garb and reveals a savior's face. It has provided hard passage, sparkled its trickery and shepherded them to death before.

— Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith (Page 18)

The Train Speaks by Eve L. Ewing

Even now, I dream of them, Quiet nights in the railyard, When the little rat feet skitter beneath me, When the last of the strong men with his gleaming silver buttons has locked the door and laid his hands against me. I see them dancing in every passing cloud.

My babies, my babies. Born unto me in the hills and green lands, loose threads catching in my sharp parts when they don't watch out, blistered hands hauling parcels of burlap as heft and shapeless as bound cotton. They move like rabbits, then. They look for a lash that isn't there, even them that never felt it. It's in their shoulders. The lash lives in their shoulders.

Long after the last biscuit is gone, when the sunrise brings steel mountains, my children look and look through the space I have made for them, the gift I have prepared. They are safe within but can see without.

They feel it before they know the words, then smile when it comes to them—it's flat. The land is flat. And they smile to think of it, this new place, the uncle or cousin who will greet them, the hat they will buy, the ribbons. They know not the cold, my babies. They know not the men who are waiting and angry. They know not that the absence of signs does not portend the absence of danger. My children. My precious ones. I can never take you home. You have none. And so you go, out into the wind.

— 1919 by Eve L. Ewing (Page 10)

Back to the Past by Amanda Gorman

At times even blessings will bleed us.

There are some who lost their lives & those who were lost from ours,

Who we might now reenter, All our someones summoned softly.

The closest we get to time travel Is our fears softening.

Our hurts unclenching, As we become more akin

To kin, as we return To who we were

Before we actually were Anything or anyone—

That is, when we were born unhating & unhindered, howling wetly

With everything we could yet become. To travel back in time is to remember

When all we knew of ourselves was love.

— Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (Page 86)