Don’t wait for inspiration. Remember. Do not wait for inspiration. You don’t need to be inspired, to write a poem. You need to reach down and touch the thing that’s boiling inside of you and make it somehow useful. –Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995) Directed by… Continue reading Audre Lorde
So what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness? And haven’t we got the right to hope—for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are? Don’t you think so? —James Baldwin, Another Country (Dial Press, 1962)
How hard must the wind blow to open our hearts? — Sonia Sanchez, Morning Haiku (Beacon Press, 2010)
Death folds the corners of my mouth into a heart-shaped star. It sits on my tongue like a stone around which your name blossoms distorted. — Audre Lorde, from “Speechless,” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. (W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition February 17, 2000)
With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light. ― Aberjhani, Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. (Black Skylark Singing and Lulu; 1st edition, July 18, 2012)
I am dreaming of tornadoes again, too many for the sky to contain. I have checked eight websites and the dictionary on my nightstand. I did not need technology or a writer to tell me there is chaos in my heart. I don’t tell people sometimes my dreams come true. I fear some parts are… Continue reading Aricka Foreman
I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn’t wanted to know. — James Baldwin, from “Sonny’s Blues” (1957), Going to Meet the Man. (Vintage; Reissue edition, April 25, 1995)… Continue reading James Baldwin
