--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I
I was born in the gut of Blackness
from between my mother's particular thighs
her waters broke upon blue-flowered linoleum
and turn to slush in the Harlem cold
10 PM on a full moon's night
my head crested round as a clock
"You were so dark," my mother said
"I thought you were a boy."

II
The first time I touched my sister alive
I was sure the earth took note
but we were not new
false skin peeled off like gloves of fire
yoked flame I was
stripped to the tips of my fingers
her song written into my palms my nostrils my belly
welcome home
in a language I was pleased to relearn. [End Page 813]

III
No cold spirit ever strolled through my bones
on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue
no dog mistook me for a bench
nor a tree nor a bone
no lover envisioned my plump brown arms
as wings nor misnamed me condor
but I can recall without counting
eyes
canceling me out
like an unpleasant appointment
postage due
stamped in yellow red purple
any color
except Black and choice
and woman
alive.

IV
I cannot recall the words of my first poem
but I remember a promise
I made my pen
never to leave it
lying
in somebody else's blood.

Excerpted from Our Dead Behind Us by Audre Lorde. Copyright © 1986 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Audre Lorde (1934-1992), who died of cancer in the Virgin Islands, is author of more than eight volumes of poems and four collections of essays, including Zami, Chosen Poems: Old and New, A Burst of Light, Sister Outsider, and Our Dead Behind Us. She taught at Tougaloo College (Mississippi), John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Hunter College.