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 know what it’s like to be an outsider.

I know how English sounds
when every word is only music.

I know how it feels not
to be an American, an English, a French.
Call them 
            Kharejee—Amrikayee, Ingleesee, Faransavi,  
see them 
            see me as alien, immigrant, Iranee.

But I’ve been here too long.
I am now an American
        with an American husband
        and American children …

But mark this—I do not belong anywhere.
I have an accent in every language I speak.

How many sat underwater,

entangled by myth’s past tense,

before Neptune first raised his

beard in the direction of Ethiopia,

and after, Odysseus—

always living—

was saved by Homer’s tablet?

Centuries after that story was written,

in the land of Not Make Believe,

a crew of slave-ship sailors

threw one hundred and thirty-two

Africans into the Atlantic Ocean.

Heave-ho to souls.

And people. And laws. And kin.

But Odysseus lives. He always will,

Our Great White Hope—

before whiteness was invented—

this hero who longs for the wood’s sway.

Despite his tendency to chase tail—

sirens and sundry other

poppycock-drinking girls—

I want to be happy that Homer imagined

a sea housing pretty, forgiving Nymphs—

while somewhere else, a wheel dances

and someone else drowns.

Sharks should pass Odysseus by,

never imagining his taste.

The gods shouldn’t pull at his fate—

now angry, now benevolent.

I try hard not to blame that man:

We all deserve our Maker’s love.

When sidelong rays reach deep 
into the house, objects turn 
unbearably distinct and I think 

of girlhood, how the sinking golden light 
had to be seized, like the last 
mouthful of soda in a warm can shared 

with my sister. Whether I wanted to or not, 
I climbed higher in the tree, higher 
than I even liked, to watch the back door 

where my mother would appear
and call me in. For years now
a supper made by someone else 

is all I want, but this late sun 
keeps pressing in. The linen chair 
beside the window looks more 

salmon-hued and woven now 
than at noon. And the not-chair 
stretches long beside it. Shadows

sharpen and themselves become
objects filling the room. A child wakes
down the hall. Light gathers on the faces

of ranunculus in a mantle vase, 
browning and collapsing 
in their centers. I think I have been 

sad every afternoon of my life.
Outside a child runs in the grass. 
Soon I will appear and call her to me.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.