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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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More by this poet

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 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

Poem about My Rights

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want

June Jordan

2017

Poems

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