#black woman poetry

[jasminesuntrell]

[asoftepiloguemylove]

AND I'LL NEVER GO HOME AGAIN // YOUR CHILDHOOD HOME AND THE PAST INSIDE OF IT

Maya Angelou // @filmnoirsbian // BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) from The Old Sugarman Place dir. Anne Walker Farrell // Tennessee Williams The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore // Anne Sexton A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston // Noah Kahan Paul Revere // pinterest // The Woman in Black (2012) dir. James Watkins // Ariel Gore We Were Witches // Katherine Fabrizio A Poem From the Good Daughter to the Difficult Mother // Marble Hornets cr. Troy Wagner // AroarA #6

[modestaesthetics]

[earthjrnl]

"My love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face" - Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf.

[shy-girl04]

Photographer - Elliott Erwitt - Valencia, Spain, 1952

Wish

Please one more

kiss in the kitchen

before we turn the lights off

W.S. Merwin

[antoniopalmerini]

Dakota fields

[aaknopf]

Leila Mottley was regularly writing and performing poetry even before she published her novel Nightcrawling at only nineteen, in 2022; today we get an advance peek into her forthcoming first collection, woke up no light. Divided into hoods—sections on Girlhood, Neighborhood, Falsehood, and Womanhood—the poems instruct us, as here, in the art of noticing, speaking boldly, and feeling deeply.

what to do when you see a Black woman cry 

stop. hum a little / just for some sound / just for a way to fill us up it is streetlamp time / all moon-cheeked black girls are mourning / a wailing kind of undoing don’t mistake this as a tragedy / it is sacred don’t mistake this as a glorious pain / we hurt.

don’t tell me it will be alright. make me a gourmet meal and don’t expect me to do the dishes after don’t try to hug me without asking first if i slept last night / if i need some jasmine tea / and a bath in a tub deep enough to fit my grief

and if i say i want a hug don’t touch my hair while you do it / don’t twist my braids around your fingers or tell me my fro is matted in the back from banging my head on the wall of so many askings

you think we are sobbing for the men, but we are praying for the men / their favorite sweat-soaked t-shirts we are screeching for our thighs for our throats / and our teeth-chipping / for the terror and the ceremony / and the unending always of this sky

so if i let you see a tear drip / if i let you see my teeth chatter know you are witnessing a miracle know you are not entitled to my face crack / head shake / sob but i do not cry in front of just anyone so stop. hum a little / just for some sound / just to fill me up

More on this book and author: 

Learn more about woke up no light by Leila Mottley.

Browse other books by Leila Mottley and follow her on Instagram @leilamottley.

Click here to read Leila Mottley's curated list of recommended books about the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Leila Mottley will be in Brooklyn for a Poetry Night reading and conversation with Tatiana Johnson-Boria at Books Are Magic (Montague Street location) on April 24, 2024 at 7:00 PM. The event will also be livestreamed for free on Youtube. 

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[taylorlq]

the tortured poets department ,,

[constancecontraire]

feeling the need to inform people who were not already aware that charles baudelaire was specifically a horny poet. whole sections of les fleurs du mal are poems about how sexy his mistress was. i feel like the asoue connection has made him known for writing bleak poems (which he did) but i must set the record straight that this man wrote about fucking just as much

[academic-vampire]

[kk122407]

close enough welcome back remus lupin

[jasminesuntrell]

No More Fucking Butterflies (19/30)

I have decided the next man I meet who makes me nervous is getting blocked, walked away from- I'll run if I have to. No conversation, no glances, no more whirlwind romances, I'm not giving chances. I'm through.

Who the hell decided butterflies in the tummy was something to romanticize in the first place? For me, I think it's my body trying to tell me to get as far as I can from this demonic creature who will only cause me harm but I kept thinking it's a good thing if his presence can make me stumble over words.

Hell no.

Neutrality is the way to go. The man you're mostly unaware of until he gives you good reasons to be. The one who doesn’t prey on the unbalanced chemical reaction that happens when you lay eyes on him.

And maybe the love story won't be the stuff of an indie romance film but it will be stable and real. It won't give you more material from which to heal. It will provide you with bliss more enduring than the intoxications of fleeting butterflies.

[hiddenpie]

I find myself touching

all of my hidden places

At the thought of you.

[shy-girl04]

Slowly, slowly

we grow together,

skin across the wound

of our separateness.

David Steinberg

[hbjsoulections]

you love me like it's your God-given job.

you drink me like you've been dying of thirst.

your fingers prune & you never mind.

a love like this, a love so divine.

[cocoabuttavasa]

i’m legit, with honours 🤓