May 8, 2007

Pat Parker, Movement in Black (Crossing Press, 1983).

As Audre Lorde writes in the introduction, "These poems would not need any introduction except for the racism and heterosexism of a poetry establishment which has whited out Parker from the recognition deserved by a dynamic and original voice" in poetry (9).

from cavities of bones
spun
       from caverns of air
i, woman - bred of man
taken from the womb of sleep;
i, woman that comes
before the first.

to think second
to believe first
       a mistake
       erased by the motion of years.
i, woman, i
can no longer claim
       a mother of flesh
       a father of marrow
I, Woman must be
       the child of myself (45)