Poetry in the Yellow

"Poem for Some Black Women" by Carolyn M. Rodgers in How I Got Ovah: New and Selected Poems (1976)

i am lonely.

all the people i know

i know too well

there was comfort in that

at first but now

we know each others miseries

too well.

we are

lonely women, who spend time waiting for

occasional flings

we live with fear.

we are lonely.

we are talented, dedicated, well read

BLACK, COMMITTED,

we are lonely.

we understand the world problems

Black women's problems with Black men

but all

we really understand is

lonely.

when we laugh,

we are so happy to laugh

we cry when we laugh

we are lonely.

we are busy people

always doing things

fearing getting trapped in rooms

loud with empty...

yet

knowing the music of silence/hating it/hoarding it

loving it/treasuring it,

it often birthing our creativity

we are lonely.

being soft and being hard

supporting our selves, earning our own bread

soft/hard/hard/soft

knowing that need must not show

will frighten away

knowing that we must

walk back-wards nonchalantly on our tip-toesssss

into

happiness,

if only for stingy moments

we know too much

we learn to understand everything,

to make too much sense out

of the world,

of pain

of lonely...

we buy clothes, we take trips

we wish, we pray, we meditate, we curse, we crave, we coo, we caw,

we need ourselves sick, we need, we need

we lonely we grow tired of tears we grow tired of fear

we grow tired but must al-ways be soft and not too serious...

not too smart not too bitchy not too sapphire

not too dumb not too not too not too

a little less a little more

add here detract there

.lonely.