By Cornelius Eady
I’m here
to tell you
an old story.
This
Appears to be
my work.
I live
in the world,
Walk
the streets…
to tell you
an old story.
This
Appears to be
my work.
I live
in the world,
Walk
the streets…
Explore Poems: Anger
Showing 1-20 of 1,083 poems
- By James CagneyI come from the kidnapped,
the assaulted—
my country’tis of reparations as in-store credit
... - By Layli Long SoldierHere, the sentence will be respected.
I will compose each sentence with care, by minding what the rules of writing dictate.
For example, all sentences will begin with capital letters.
Likewise, the history of the sentence will be honored by ending each one... - By Tomás Q. MorínIn this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.
Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own... - By Shanta LeeMama birthed me, Papa sold me in the land of weeping willows
Traces of sin trail miles across skin, I go by Never Forget
My body’s evidence of daddy’s pestilence spread across the land
His sin traces my skin, a path never forgotten
Nameless,... - By Margaret WalkerFor my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending - By Gwendolyn BrooksJohn Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe,
all whitebluerose below his golden hair,
wrapped richly in right linen and right wool,
almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff;
almost forgot Grandtully (which is The
Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost
forgot the sculpture... - By Evie ShockleyAnd now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could. Asia Graves looks straight ahead as she calmly recalls the night a man paid $200 on a Boston...
- By Lorna Dee CervantesIt was never in the planning,
in the life we thought
we’d live together, two fast
women living cheek to cheek,
still tasting the dog’s
breath of boys in our testy
new awakening.
We were never the way
they had it planned.
Their wordless tongues we stole
and tasted the... - By Lorna Dee CervantesHe was a good boy
making his way through
the Santa Barbara pines,
sighting the blast of fluff
as he leveled the rifle,
and the terrible singing began.
He was ten years old,
hunting my grandpa’s supper.
He had dreamed of running,
shouldering the rifle to town,
selling it, and... - By Frank ChipasulaThey ran out of cuffs, but
with apologies for the inconvenience,
they carefully wrapped barbed wire
round the wrists of the political prisoners
who, as if in a ritual stretched
their arms out to the young masters.
The spikes strayed into the flesh still
and the prisoners... - By Frank ChipasulaI have nothing to give you, but my anger
And the filaments of my hatred reach across the border
You, you have sold many and me to exile.
Now shorn of precious minds, you rely only on
What hands can grow to build your... - By Frank ChipasulaIn the sad hotel that drinks a swamp,
You breathe malarial air and enjoy
Frog music piped in from the dismal swamp.
Bits of your life measured out in bars,
Your thoughts gripped in clamps,
Your lips pierced through
With fish-hooks, locked shut,
Silenced over the stab... - By Crystal Simone SmithHe was an open book. An opening book. That had just been opened up somewhat wider. By sorrow. And-by us. By all of us, black and white, who had so recently mass-inhabited him. He had not, it seemed, gone unaffected...
- By Donna Aza Weir-SoleyLights, camera, action!
Cue George Floyd
crying for his Black mother
for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
8 minutes and 46 seconds
Kumbaya Mummah
George Floyd’s Black life belonged to Derek Chauvin;
he took it because it was his to take.
in Amerikkka Black life is police property
Black... - By Elizabeth BradfieldHow can I find a way to praise
it? Do the early inventors & embracers
churn with regret? I don’t think my parents
—born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew
& chew & chew on plastic. But of course they
do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air.
And... - By Jason McCallProbably one of those understated pieces. Simple silver. No ring
of laurels surrounding an emperor or an eagle
catching prey in its claws. No hours marked
by birthstones. I like to believe he cared
about showing his worth through the transitive properties
of the world.... - By Jason McCallI won’t care if Trump is halfway into his third term.
I won’t care if the world is half flood and half fire.
I won’t care if my great-niece learns to talk
about tigers the way I talk about the velociraptors
from Jurassic Park.
I... - By Jacqueline Allen TrimbleQ. How do others sin against you?
A. By cursing me—telling lies about me—or striking me.
Q. What must you do to those who thus sin against you?
A. I must forgive them. *
See, I learned my catechism well.
Learned to offer my cloak and... - By Jacqueline Allen TrimbleThis carpetbagging, gentrifying Aryan mother’s son cut
through our neighborhood buying houses. Called himself
a community developer, clipped all the live edges and liberty
neat and bound for himself and his posterity. Declaration of Independence
just doing what it do. And he was pursuing...