More Important Than Our Silence

     If Donald Trump had ever heard of Audre Lorde, he would have loathed her: a black feminist lesbian activist poet who famously declared "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." She dedicated her life and work to finding other ways to dismantle the mansions of racism and all other forms of inequality.

     Lorde died of cancer in 1992. She would probably be saddened but not surprised by the state of the United States in this summer of 2020.

       Today we present Lorde's "Song for Many Movements" and wish it had become less relevant since the nineties.

Song for Many Movements

Nobody wanted to die on the way
and caught between ghosts of whiteness
and the real water
none of us wanted to leave
our bones
on the way to salvation
three planets to the left
a century of light years ago
our spices are separate and particular
but our skins sing in complimentary keys
at a quarter to eight mean time
we were telling the same stories
over and over and over.
Broken down gods survive
in the crevasses and mudpots
of every beleaguered city
where it is obvious
there are too many bodies
to cart to the ovens
or gallows
and our uses have become
more important than our silence
after the fall
too many empty cases
of blood to bury or burn
there will be no body left
to listen
and our labor
has become more important
than our silence
Our labor has become
more important
than our silence.