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A Poem For Women in Rage

1) The poem describes a tense encounter between the speaker, a black woman, and a white woman on the Upper West Side of New York City. 2) The white woman, clutching a bottle of gin and a butcher knife, yells a racial slur and spins towards the speaker with the knife. 3) In that moment, the speaker considers grabbing the knife to confront the white woman's rage with her own anger. However, she is called back by her lover's voice and straightens up as the white woman runs away drunkenly down the street.

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971 views4 pages

A Poem For Women in Rage

1) The poem describes a tense encounter between the speaker, a black woman, and a white woman on the Upper West Side of New York City. 2) The white woman, clutching a bottle of gin and a butcher knife, yells a racial slur and spins towards the speaker with the knife. 3) In that moment, the speaker considers grabbing the knife to confront the white woman's rage with her own anger. However, she is called back by her lover's voice and straightens up as the white woman runs away drunkenly down the street.

Uploaded by

janer48
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Masthead Logo The Iowa Review

Volume 12
Issue 2 Spring-Summer: Extended Outlooks: The Iowa Article 65
Review Collection of Contemporary Writing by Women

1981

A Poem for Women in Rage


Audre Lorde

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview


Part of the Creative Writing Commons

Recommended Citation
Lorde, Audre. "A Poem for Women in Rage." The Iowa Review 12.2 (1981): 220-222. Web.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.2734

This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Iowa Review by an
authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact lib-ir@uiowa.edu.
A Poem forWomen inRage
Audre Lorde
A killing summer heat wraps up the city
of all who are not bound to stay
emptied
a black woman waits for awhite woman
leans against the railing in the Upper West Side street
at intermission
the distant sounds of Broadway dim to lulling
until I can hear the voice of sparrows
like a promise I await
the woman I love
our slice of time
a the city's pain.
place beyond

In the corner phone booth awoman


street between us
glassed in by reflections of the
her white face dangles
a tapestry of disasters seen
a veneer of order
through
mouth drawn like an ill-used road map
to eyes without core, a bottled heart

impeccable credentials of old pain.


The veneer cracks open
she lurches through the glaze into my afternoon
our eyes touch like hot wire
and the street snaps into nightmare
awoman with white eyes is clutching
a bottle of Fleischman's gin
is fumbling at herwaistband
is pulling a butcher knife from her ragged pants
her hand arcs backward "You Black Bitch!"
the heavy blade spins out toward me
slow motion

years of fury surge upward like awall


and I do not hear it
clatter to the pavement at my feet.

220

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Gears of ancient nightmare churn
swift in familiar dread and silence
but this time I am awake, released
I smile. Now. This time is
turn.
my
I bend to the knife my ears blood-drumming
across the street my lover's voice
the only moving sound within white heat
"Don't touch it!"
I straighten, weaken, then start down again
hungry for resolution
as anger and so close at hand
simple
my fingers reach for the familiarblade
the known grip of wood againstmy palm
for I have held it to thewhetstone
a thousand nights for this
escorting fury through my sleep
like a cherished friend
to wake in the stink of rage
beside the sleep-white face of love.

The keen steel of a dreamt knife


sparkshoned from thewhetted edgewith a tortured shriek
between my lover's voice and the grey spinning
a choice of pain or fury

slashing
across
judgment like a crimson scar
I could open her up to my anger
a
with point sharpened upon love.

In the deathland my lover's voice


fades
like the roar of a train derailed
on the other side of a river

every white woman's face I love


and distrust is upon it
a paper
eating green grapes from bag
marking yellow exam-books tucked into amanila folder
as the last
orderly thought before death
I throw the switch.

221
screams of steel
Through crumpled
I search the wreckage for a ticket of hatred

my lover's voice

calling
a knife at her throat.

In this steaming aisle of the dead


I am weeping
to learn the names of those streets

my feet have worn thin with running


and why never serve me
they will
nor ever lead me home.
"Don't touch it!" she cries
I straighten myself
in confusion
a drunken woman is running away
down theWest Side street

my lover's voice moves


a
shadowy clearing.

Corralled in fantasy
the woman with white eyes has vanished
to become her own nightmare
and a french butcher blade hangs in my house
love's token
I remember this knife
it carves its message into my sleeping
she only read its warning
written upon my face.

222

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