Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
A Black girl, 222
A Family Resemblance, 183
A killing summer heat wraps up the city, 308
A letter in my mailbox says you’ve made it, 246
A Litany for Survival, 283
A Lover’s Song, 192
A Poem For Women In Rage, 308
A Question of Climate, 328
A Sewerplant Grows In Harlem Or I’m A Stranger Here Myself When Does The Next Swan Leave, 236
A Small Slaughter, 293
A Woman Speaks, 273
Afraid is a country with no exit visas, 327
Afterimages, 303
Always, 223
Am I to be cursed forever with becoming, 220
An upright abutment in the mouth, 337
Artisan, 288
Because a burning sword notches both of my doorposts, 280
Between Ourselves (1976), 267
Between Ourselves (1978), 296
Black people fishing the causeway, 329
Bloodbirth, 198
But What Can You Teach My Daughter, 291
Cables to Rage or I’ve Been Talking on This Street Corner a Hell of a Long Time, 242
Call me, 252
Chain, 277
Change of Season, 220
Coal, 184
Coming together, 287
Conclusion, 224
Coniagui Women, 275
Contact Lenses, 290
Day breaks without thanks or caution, 293
Diaspora, 327
Down Wall Street, 240
Either heard or taught, 250
Equal Opportunity, 324
Father Son and Holy Ghost, 188
First rule of the road: attend quiet victims first., 301
Florida, 329
For those of us who live at the shoreline, 283
From Inside an Empty Purse, 292
Generation, 189
Generation II, 222
Give me fire and I will sing you morning, 192
He, through the eyes of the first marauder, 187
How do you spell change like frayed slogan underwear, 231
How is the word made flesh made steel made shit, 236
How the days went, 185
How the young attempt and are broken, 189
However the image enters, 303
I am a Black woman, 345
I am so glad to be moving, 217
I can’t just sit here, 349
I have not ever seen my fathers grave., 188
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck, 226
I learned to be honest, 328
I was born in the gut of Blackness, 315
If we hate the rush hour subways, 238
If you come as softly, 190
If You Come Softly, 190
In a hotel in Tashkent, 331
In the Keyfood Market on Broadway, 244
In workshops without light, 288
Inheritance—His, 340
Is the total black, being spoken, 184
It is the sink of the afternoon, 209
jessehelms, 345
Keyfood, 244
Lacking what they want to see, 290
Love Poem, 248
Love, Maybe, 223
Making it, 210
Making Love to Concrete, 337
Martha this is a catalog of days, 199
Martha, 199
Money cannot buy you, 292
Moon marked and touched by sun, 273
Movement Song, 226
Moving Out or The End of Cooperative Living, 217
My body arcing across your white place, 210
My face resembles your face, 340
My sister and I, 295
My sister has my hair my mouth my eyes, 183
“Never Take Fire from a Woman,” 295
New York City 1970, 231
News item: Two girls, fifteen and sixteen, were sent to foster, 277
Now that I Am Forever with Child, 185
Of all the ways in which this country, 234
On a night of the full moon, 211
Once when I walked into a room (Between Ourselves [1976]), 267
Once when I walked into a room (Between Ourselves [1978]), 296
One Year To Life On The Grand Central Shuttle, 238
Out of my flesh that hungers, 211
Outlines, 317
Passing men in the street who are dead, 224
Pity for him who suffers from his waste., 191
Political Relations, 331
Portrait, 285
Power, 259
Progress Report, 215
Recreation, 287
Revolution Is One Form Of Social Change, 251
Rooming houses are old women, 197
Rooming houses are old women, 197
Sacrifice, 254
Scar, 263
Separation, 249
Sequelae, 280
17 luxury condominiums, 347
Sister Outsider, 294
Solstice, 261
Song For A Thin Sister, 250
Sowing, 209
Speak earth and bless me with what is richest, 248
Spring III, 186
Spring is the harshest, 186
Strong women, 285
Suffer the Children, 191
Suspension, 193
That which is inside of me screaming, 198
Thaw, 339
The American Cancer Society Or There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Coon, 234
The american deputy assistant secretary of defense, 324
The Brown Menace Or Poem To The Survival of Roaches, 252
The Coniagui women, 275
The difference between poetry and rhetoric, 259
The Evening News, 301
The language of past seasons, 339
The only hungers left, 254
The Politics of Addiction, 347
The stars dwindle, 249
The Workers Rose on May Day Or Postscript To Karl Marx, 240
Therapy, 286
There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women, 333
There are so many roots to the tree of anger, 228
These days, 215
This is a simple poem., 263
This is how I came to be loved, 242
To a Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On, 187
To The Girl Who Lives In A Tree, 246
To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to Be a Woman, 315
Today Is Not the Day, 349
Trying to see you, 286
We entered silence, 193
We forgot to water the plantain shoots, 261
We were born in a poor time, 294
What do we want from each other, 333
What do you mean, 291
What hue lies in the slit of anger, 317
When the man is busy, 251
Who Said It Was Simple, 228