... momma help me turn the face of history to your face. - Getting Down To Get Over - Dedicated To My Mother - June Jordan

poem for my love

how do we come to be here next to each other in the night
where are the stars that show us to our love inevitable
outside the leaves flame usual in darkness and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh
the black men waiting on the corner for a womanly mirage
i am amazed by peace
it is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air

This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America: that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.

Rather than struggling to share in a patently evil kind of power, the power of people who will demean and destroy those who are weaker than they, I think we might, more usefully, have sought to redefine that meaning of power, altogether.