#BlackPoetry

Practice Makes People by Amanda Gorman

The making of plans, When this is over; The We can't wait, Really our knuckles rapping Against the future, sounding Out what lies beneath its hull. But tomorrow isn't revealed, Rather rendered, refined. Wrought. Remember that fate isn't fought Against. It is fought for. Again & again.

Maybe there is no fresh wisdom, Just old woes, New words to name them by & the will to act. We've seen life lurching back in stops & starts Like a wet-born thing learning to walk. The air charged & changed. Us, charged & changed. A yoked-out eternity For that needle to pierce our arm. At last: a pain we asked for. Yes, it is enough to be moved By what we might be.

— Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

Sights and Sounds by Benjamin Zephaniah

There are More than Six thousand Different Languages Spoken On Earth.

There is No person On Earth Who can speak Them all.

Every person On Earth Could learn To speak Any language On Earth.

There are Some languages That are not Spoken.

Languages Like people Have family trees.

Languages Like people Are all precious.

Languages Like people Can disappear.

Languages are Like people

Respect your tongue.

Sign languages Are Crucial

Protect your hands.

— Wicked World! by Benjamin Zephaniah

My Father as Cartographer by Natasha Tretheway

In dim light now, his eyes straining to survey the territory: here is the country of Loss, its colony Grief; the great continent Desire and its borderland Regret;

vast, unfathomable water, an archipelago—the tiny islands of Joy, untethered, set adrift. At the bottom of the map his legend and cartouche, the measures of distance, key

to the symbols marking each known land. What's missing is the traveler's warning at the margins: a dragon— its serpentine signature—monstrous as a two-faced daughter.

— Monument by Natasha Trethewey

Mothers by Nikki Giovanni

the last time i was home to see my mother we kissed exchanged pleasantries and unpleasantries pulled a warm comforting silence around us and read separate books

i remember the first time i consciously saw her we were living in a three room apartment on burns avenue

mommy always sat in the dark i don't know how i knew that but she did

that night i stumbled into the kitchen maybe because i've always been a night person or perhaps because i had wet the bed she was sitting on a chair the room was bathed in moonlight diffused through tiny window panes she may have been smoking but maybe not her hair was three-quarters her height which made me a strong believer in the samson myth and very black

i'm sure i just hung there by the door i remember thinking: what a beautiful lady she was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by "come here" she said "i'll teach you a poem: i see the moon the moon sees me god bless the moon and god bless me" i taught that to my son who recited it for her just to say we must learn to bear the pleasures as we have borne the pains

— Love poems by Nikki Giovanni