You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very 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 backyard.

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.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

The sky was blue, so blue that day
    And each daisy white, so white,
O, I knew that no more could rains fall grey
    And night again be night.

                    . . . . .                    

I knew, I knew. Well, if night is night,
    And the grey skies greyly cry,
I have in a book for the candle light,
    A daisy dead and dry.

Cord or twine used to bind 
or cover a rope, keep the ends
from fraying. To begin, 

place a hand 
on your daughter’s shoulders.
Tell her fifth grade is 
a bloodletting.

Show her your own path
of hard turns taken
before you were hauled taut
and loosed into motherhood.

Say, this knot 
is a folded note. 
This knot is a map

back to me. Lay out a rope.
Tell her to gather each end.
Say stitch them tight
or burn them down.

The moon
Was an old, old woman, tonight,
Hurrying home;
Calling pitifully to her children,
The stars,
Begging them to go home with her
For she was afraid,
But they would not.
They only laughed
While she crept along
Huddling against the dark blue wall of the Night
Stooping low,
Her old black hood wrapped close about her ears,
And only the pale curve of her yellow cheek
With a tear in the hollow of it
Showing through.
And the wind laughed too,
For he was teasing the old woman,
Pelting her with snowballs,
Filling her old eyes with the flakes of them,
Making her cold.
She stumbled along, shivering,
And once she fell,
And the snow buried her;
And all her jewels
Slid from the old bag
Under her arm
And fell to earth,
And the tall trees seized them,
And hung them about their necks,
And filled their bony arms with them.
All their nakedness was covered by her jewels,
And they would not give them back to her.
The old moon-woman moaned piteously,
Hurrying home;
And the wild wind laughed at her
And her children laughed too,
And the tall trees taunted her
With their glittering plunder.

What I knew then was plastic packages
of ramen—instant, four for a dollar,
because with four eggs to match, I’d have myself
four dinners, provided I could keep the gas on
for the month and get that old stove lit.
with a match. I also knew what went
at the store for a buck: pinto beans and sliced white,
popcorn, carrots, peas . . . even juice, long as it was
orange, concentrated and frozen in a can.
But what I didn’t yet know was how

that word—buck—got started, back with
my daddy’s daddy’s daddy and on back
down the line, back when for their rheumy knees
men used panther oil brought all the way
up from Florida when panthers still lived
down there, back when men without a dime
to their name could pay land taxes in
skins and piled as many kills they could
on a wagon headed downtown
to sell deer for just that—for one dollar, one

buck, a pop. No, what I knew then were bucks
in my tip jar, how never to start the night empty
but to always put in a few of my own, otherwise
not a soul would think me worth a dollar
and would trash the whole shift
with the rattle of pocket change.
And though I couldn’t have said when deer season
hit, no one had to tell me
about the weather it brought, how cardboard
crammed between wind-rattled panes helped
but barely enough, how under every cover I owned

I’d sleep until the floor stung my feet
awake with cold. Once I got up and turned over
my car, I just might make it to work
on time, but not until I got stuck at a red light
with a man who split his two fingers apart
to make a V for the snake-flick of his fat
tongue, which meant something
about “a good time” before he gunned
his truck and gave me the full view
of what his flatbed towed—a whitetail

doe, one eye open but somehow more
milk or smoke or dirty dishwater than
eye, her tongue off its hinge, flopping
obscene with every bump down

that road. On my popping speakers, a new
version of that same old song—now you don’t need that
money when you look like that, do ya honey—
and it was then I knew the bullshit
made up for the endless litany to hit
these woods—all those floods that scrubbed
the babes from their burrows, lifting
their pink writing to a flotsam of rot, or else
a rage of flames to crowd those same holes
with natural-born enemies, snakes
huddled alongside a scorched blister
of mice and turtles nearly cooked
in their own shells—and everybody saying
wild things could care for themselves and always knew
what to do: how to seek higher
ground and survive. But really, believing that made me
just another fool in this world mistaking
the happiness of looking at a pretty, wild thing

with the happiness that thing feels.

Put another way, I was once young and terribly
pretty and gripped the wheel white, felt the rip
in the vinyl seat rub the part of my leg
raw where my skirt didn’t
cover. I shut off
my radio. In the silence was the talk of men I’d heard
all my life—the bumper stickers that read
show me your rack or chasing white
tail—all the old jokes—that buck not dead
but put down for his dirt nap and itching for a mount,
that doe not female but a slickhead, hot and ready
for the rut, all those not shot but taken in peak season,
in sweet, sweet November. Put another way, I was almost
on empty, and though no one
believed it or cared to see, I was just another
animal, and like all animals
desired, we would suffer.

This, no song of an ingénue,
     This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
     Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
     This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments,—
     I loved them until they loved me.

Decked in garments of sable hue,
     Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
     Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
     Through God’s acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
     “I loved them until they loved me.”

Pictures pass me in long review,—
     Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender, and, often, true;
     Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
     Always saw what the end would be.
We’re as Nature has made us—hence
     I loved them until they loved me.

                    L’Envoi:
Princes, never I’d give offense,
     Won’t you think of me tenderly?
Here’s my strength and my weakness, gents,—
     I loved them until they loved me.

Oh, I should like to ride the seas,
     A roaring buccaneer;
A cutlass banging at my knees,
     A dirk behind my ear.
And when my captives’ chains would clank
     I’d howl with glee and drink,
And then flight out the quivering plank
     And watch the beggars sink.

I’d like to straddle gory decks,
     And dig in laden sands,
And know the feel of throbbing necks
     Between my knotted hands.
Oh, I should like to strut and curse
     Among my blackguard crew. . . .
But I am writing little verse,
     As little ladies do.

Oh, I should like to dance and laugh
     And pose and preen and sway,
And rip the hearts of men in half,
     And toss the bits away.
I’d like to view the reeling years
     Through astonished eyes,
And dip my finger-tips in tears,
     And give my smiles for sighs.

I’d stroll beyond the ancient bounds,
     And tap at fastened gates,
And hear the prettiest of sounds,—
     The clink of shattered fates.
My slaves I’d like to bind with thongs
     That cut and burn and chill. . . .
But I am writing little songs,
     As little ladies will.

DAILY dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way. 
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there, 
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, 
Hear a song, or watch a stage, 
Leave some words upon a page, 
Claim a foe, or hail a friend—
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and strength, 
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe, 
Back to bed I’m bound to go. 
High my heart, or bowed my head, 
All my days but lead to bed. 
Up, and out, and on; and then 
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall—
I’m a fool to rise at all!

WOMAN wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman’s moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

I DO not like my state of mind;
I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I’d be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men. . . .
I’m due to fall in love again.

Prisoners are we,
American citizens imprisoned
For daring in the name of Democracy
To protest against the continued denial
Of the right of self-government
To twenty millions of the American people.

We lie in a dungeon
Long ago abandoned and condemned,
Just as politically we are held
Imprisoned in a subjection
Abandoned and condemned
By every other nation of English speech and spirit.

Painfully raising my head,
I look down the long row
Of gray-blanketed heaps.
Under every heap a woman,
Weak, sick, but determined,
Twenty gray fortresses of determination.