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These Poems

June Jordan

1936 –

2002

These poems

they are things that I do

in the dark

reaching for you

whoever you are

and

are you ready?

These words

they are stones in the water

running away

These skeletal lines

they are desperate arms for my longing and love.

I am a stranger

learning to worship the strangers

around me

whoever you are

whoever I may become.

June Jordan was born in New York, New York, on July 9, 1936, and attended Barnard College. She was an activist, poet, writer, and teacher, as well as a prominent figure in the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and LGBTQ movements of the twentieth century.

Themes

About this Poem

“These Poems” originally appeared in Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry (Random House, 1977).

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I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies

^{Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto,

President of The People’s Republic of Angola: 1976}

1
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits

June Jordan

2017

Poem for Haruko

I never thought I’d keep a record of my pain
or happiness
like candles lighting the entire soft lace
of the air
around the full length of your hair/a shower
organized by God
in brown and auburn
undulations luminous like particles
of flame
But now I do
retrieve an afternoon of apricots
and water interspersed with cigarettes
and sand and rocks
we walked across:
How easily you held
my hand

June Jordan

2017

Poem for South African Women

^{Commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who, August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against the “dompass” in the capital of apartheid. Presented at The United Nations, August 9, 1978.}

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile

June Jordan

2017

Poems

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