Coal

 by Audre Lorde

I
Is the total black, being spoken
From the earth’s inside.
There are many kinds of open.
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
How a sound comes into a word, coloured
By who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open
Like a diamond on glass windows
Singing out within the crash of passing sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—
And come whatever wills all chances
The stub remains
An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue
To explode through my lips
Like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
Bedevil me.

Love is a word another kind of open—
As a diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am black because I come from the earth’s inside
Take my word for jewel in your open light.

“Coal” from Coal, © 1976 by Audre Lorde – W. W. Norton Publishing

For more about Audre Lorde and her work, click

“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”

— Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was an American writer, poet, feminist, lesbian, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was born in New York City, the daughter of a father from Barbados, and a mother from Grenada. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, women, and the exploration of black female identity. Her first poem was published in Seventeen magazine when she was still in high school. She became an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press in 1977, and a co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980. She survived breast cancer in 1978, but died at age 58 of liver cancer in 1992.

Books

• The First Cities. New York City: Poets Press. 1968. OCLC12420176.
• Cables to Rage. London: Paul Breman. 1970. OCLC18047271.
• From a Land Where Other People Live. Detroit: Broadside Press. 1973. ISBN978-0-910296-97-7.
• New York Head Shop and Museum. Detroit: Broadside Press. 1974. ISBN978-0-910296-34-2.
• Coal. New York: W. W. Norton Publishing. 1976. ISBN978-0-393-04446-1.
• Between Our Selves. Point Reyes, California: Eidolon Editions. 1976. OCLC2976713.
• Hanging Fire. 1978.
• The Black Unicorn. New York: W. W. Norton Publishing. 1978. ISBN978-0-393-31237-9.
• The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. 1980. ISBN978-1-879960-73-2.
• Uses of the Erotic: the erotic as power. Tucson, Arizona: Kore Press. 1981. ISBN978-1-888553-10-9.
• Chosen Poems: Old and New. New York: W. W. Norton Publishing. 1982. ISBN978-0-393-30017-8.
• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press. 1983. ISBN978-0-89594-122-0.
• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press. 1984. ISBN978-0-89594-141-1. (reissued 2007)
• Our Dead Behind Us. New York: W. W. Norton Publishing. 1986. ISBN978-0-393-30327-8.
• A Burst of Light. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books. 1988. ISBN978-0-932379-39-9.
• The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance. New York: W. W. Norton Publishing. 1993. ISBN978-0-393-03513-1.
• I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. ISBN978-0-19-534148-5.