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Language by Camille T. Dungy

Silence is one part of speech, the war cry of wind down a mountain pass another. A stranger's voice echoing through lonely valleys, a lover's voice rising so close it's your own tongue: these are keys to cipher, the way the high hawk's key unlocks the throat of the sky and the coyote's yip knocks it shut, the way the aspens' bells conform to the breeze while the rapid's drum defines resistance. Sage speaks with one voice, pinyon with another. Rock, wind her hand, water her brush, spells and then scatters her demands. Some notes tear and pebble our paths. Some notes gather: the bank we map our lives around.

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 55)

American Sonnet by Wanda Coleman

rejection can kill you

it can force you to park outside neon-lit liquor stores and finger the steel of your contemplation. it can even make you rob yourself

(when does the veteran of one war fail to appreciate the vet of another?)

the ragged scarecrow lusts in the midst of a fallow field and the lover who prances in circles envies me my moves/has designs on my gizzard/kicks shit

this is the city we've come to all the lights are red all the poets are dead and there are no norths

— Aloud: voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe by Miguel Algarín, Bob Holman (Page 190)

Life by Kwame Alexander, for Professor Derrick Bell

This morning I woke to find termites eating away at my home . . . my friends assured me that the good liberal ones were not involved

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 134)

I Am Confused by Nikki Giovanni

I am confused

I am in a not so much fog As gray cloud

I cannot read The landmarks

Let alone The Danger signs

I do not know

Where I am

Or how I got here

I am lost

I want to find myself

In your arms

— Bicycles by Nikki Giovanni (Page 15)

The Spider Speaks by Shara McCallum

No choice but to spin, the life given.

Mother warned me I would wake one dawn

to a sun no longer yellow, to an expanse of blue,

no proper word to name it. Weaving

the patterned threads of my life, each day

another web and the next. If instead I could carve

my message in stone, would it mean more?

I have only this form to give. When the last

silvery strand leaves my belly, I will see

what colour the sun has become.

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 228)

A Poem of Friendship by Nikki Giovanni

We are not lovers because of the love we make but the love we have

We are not friends because of the laughs we spend but the tears we save

I don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak

I will never miss you because of what we do but what we are together

— Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (Page 30)

[Earth, I Thank You] by Anne Spencer

Earth, I thank you for the pleasure of your language You've had a hard time bringing it to me from the ground to grunt thru the noun To all the way feeling seeing smelling touching —awareness I am here!

— Black nature by Camille T. Dungy (Page 325)

The Wind in the Bottle by Nikki Giovanni (For Gloria Haffer on her Sixtieth Birthday)

Twice she dreamed of rainbows Not for the pots of gold nor the elves basking in the colors but the symmetry of the line going up and down

Once she wished for wings or at least red shoes to ease on down the road

Often she worries two arms one head one heart can't protest the falling fruit

Something will stay on the tree and rot Something will fall and be left behind

Twice she dreamed of rainbows playing hide-and-seek with the clouds

The colors defy the sun

Who kisses the wind Good night

— Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni (Page 7)

9 haiku for Freedom's Sisters by Sonia Sanchez

1. (Kathleen Cleaver) quicksilver panther woman speaking in thunder

2. (Charlayne Hunter-Gault) summer silk woman brushing the cobwebs off Southern legs

3. (Shirley Chisholm) We saw your woman sound footprinting congressional hallways

4. (Betty Shabazz) your quiet face arrived a road unafraid of ashes...

5. (Fannie Lou Hamer) feet deep in cotton you shifted the country's eyes

6. (Barbara Jordan) Texas star carrying delicate words around your waist

7. (Rosa Parks) baptizer of morning light walking us away from reserved spaces

8. (Myrlie Evers-Williams) you rescued women and men from southern subscriptions of death

9. (Dr. Dorothy Irene Height) I your words helped us reconnoiter the wonder of women

II woman sequestered in the hurricane of herstory...

— Morning haiku by Sonia Sanchez (Page 71)

There's No Power Like Home by Amanda Gorman

We were sick of home, Home sick. That mask around our ear Hung itself into the year. Once we stepped into our home, We found ourselves gasping, tear- ing it off like a bandage, Like something that gauzed The great gape of our mouth. Even faceless, a smile can still Scale up our cheeks, Bone by bone, Our eyes crinkling Delicately as rice paper At some equally fragile beauty— The warbling blues of a dog, A squirrel venturing close, The lilt of a beloved's joke. Our mask is no veil, but a view. What are we, if not what we see in another.

— Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (Page 19)

BLK History Month by Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not viable then wind does not carry the seeds and drop them on fertile ground rain does not dampen the land and encourage the seeds to root sun does not warm the earth and kiss the seedlings and tell them plain: You're As Good As Anybody Else You've Got A Place Here, Too

— Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni (Page 14)

Almost a Conversation by Mary Oliver

I have not really, not yet, talked with the otter about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding is all body expression—

he swims like the sleekest fish, he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles. Little by little he trusts my eyes and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close. I admire his whiskers and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells me about his life is clear. He does not own a computer. He imagines the river will last forever. He does not envy the dry house I live in. He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship. He wonders, morning after morning, that the river is so cold and fresh and alive, and still I don't jump in.

— Devotions by Mary Oliver (Page 75)