Dangerous Woman

“Moon marked and touched by sun  
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.  
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love  
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus  
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities  
who am ageless and half-grown  
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths  
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic  
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures  
promised
I am
woman
and not white.”

~ Audrey Geraldine Lorde (1934 –1992) was a writer, feminist, womanist, and civil rights activist. As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity. In relation to non-intersectional feminism in the United States, Lorde famously said, "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."