Remembering Audre Lorde: February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Black Feminist Lesbian Mother Warrior Poet Audre Lorde. When Paula Cooey introduced me to her writings in 1985, I remember being shocked that I could be so persuaded and so moved by a lesbian non-Christian, given that I was so entrenched in a kind of Christianity that insisted such people were demonic. Cooey gave me Lorde in small doses and one day told me her entire identity. By then I could only be fully conflicted because I had come to love her and her insight on the world, her black woman self so much my auntie or sister, so kin to me. I suppose I have Paula and Audre and Alice (Walker) to thank for my walk toward at-the-root inclusivity and hospitality infused Christianity. It took some years, some experiences, some loving, some losing to get here.... And the journey continues. 

I learned of her death, as it turns out, 4 days after she had died (I found the journel in which I wrote this poem below on the spot and it's dated November 21, 1992). The day I heard Audre Lorde died, I was in a Womanist session at the Academy of American Religion. Mother Katie G. Cannon, Womanist ethicist and fierce-warrior, was speaking and someone walked onto the stage and whispered the news in her ear. She paused and gathered herself and then announced it to those of us gathered.

We all gasped and sighed in a chorus that dissolved into sobs. I was sitting between Womanist religious scholars sociologist Cheryl Townsend Gilkes and theologian Cheryl Kirk-Duggan and wrote a poem on the spot that Cheryl Townsend Gilkes made me get up and read. I was shaking from fear and grief. Sister Outsider essays had changed my life when I was in undergraduate with Paula Cooey at Trinity University. Thandeka and Summer Cree both made their way to me and just stared at me before they in turn hugged me so long and tight for the offering. I fell in love with Thandeka that day, and later wrote a poem to honor her. I wrote like mad for three days straight. It was the gift our Elder/Ancestor gave me as she left this plane. I honor her today as I remember. Thanks, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, for reminding me.

ON HEARING AUDRE LORDE DIED

She is dead
and I did not know her
but I did

I knew her in my body
hot with the writhing

of power welling up
and flowing down my legs
to nourish the earth
and all my lovers.

She taught me to love the power,
embrace the pain--
be in charge.

I did not know her
but I did

I knew her in my heart
torn with the ambiguities
of living between, outside
the known world,
diving deep and walking away
from my heart to claim
the cosmos
as my own--

to love men and women,
separate, together, whenever
without backing down
from the power.

I did not know her
but I knew her well.

(Farewell, dear Audre)
© Valerie Bridgeman

November 21, 1992
1:40 pm

SHE is an Experience

SHE is an Experience

Every blue moon or so

A woman steps through clouds

Shines like a blue diamond,

Catches the light, amazes everyone who sees her

Rare form and sturdy, African-violet strong

She thrives in harsh conditions

Does not wither under heated gazes of disbelief—

She makes believers fall to their knees in adoration

She is an experience all her own,

Needs no supporting cast though she calls others to her,

Like Lady Wisdom, her voice sounds clear

And people answer

Subtle and muted, she doles out

Hope in abundant increments

Takes ups and downs of living with grace

Like blue diamonds or blue moons

Mountains and valleys, she climbs and descends

With the presence of mind to pace for the journey

She accepts her plump thighs and heavy hands

Weighted with history, her eyes speak stories

Still waiting to be told, and she tells a fierce truth

She-bear strong, she lives from the center

Of all she believes and does not back down

She is an experience all her own.

© Valerie Bridgeman

October 2007

Caught Loving

I have some favorites

of the pictures of us

but mostly I love

the energy exuding

from them, the sheer

joy and laughter

that overtook us

that filled the space

that engulfed us

flooded us 

mostly I like 

that the camera

caught us

loving

© Valerie Bridgeman
August 2013

WRITE

Write

write what you cannot bear

to lay down in a grave

without having written it

write what your ashes--

scattered over waters of your choosing--

would refuse to return

to earth's dusty crust

write the secrets you have refused

your children, the embraces

your lover will never get

let the words dare you and damn you

to truth, to the gawk of respectable women

who label you because they

have no imagination

and even less bravery

travel the world, yes...

but if you do not leave

the 30 blocks of school, of home,

of church, of grocery store

travel the exotic twists

within your veins,

a better terrain to discover

the wonders of the world

write of this world

and be amazed.

© Valerie Bridgeman

June 29, 2012

in Salvadore Bahia Brazil

Generations Passing

Generations Passing

I remember now, the first time I noticed.

She was stooping low,

But not bowed.

It was the stoop

Of an old woman.

Her laughter was the same,

But her eyes

Had the ancestors in them now,

I remembered that look from PawPaw

And marveled that it had come

So soon to her.

Maybe she had summoned them

With her gait,

Moving swift as a youngster.

Her gray hair recounted every sorrow

Born in sleepless nights,

Waiting on prodigal children

Who did not understand

What power

She possessed.

Counting every sin against her,

Youth slipped away into the bend in her back,

Heavy with grief

That is only eased

With tears and shouting.

Her gardens became paradise,

A way to survive in the winter

While she cultivated her soul.

The dirt was her best friend.

Her students thought her brilliant—

She is, but not from books

As they supposed.

Her wisdom

Comes from the ages

Of listening

Being listening to

Stopping her ears

When she could stand no more.

She complained, but not whining.

Life deserved a good complaint.

She knew the lyrics to the song

Sang it a few times

Revised it for her children.

I remember now, the first time I noticed.

© 1995 Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
This poem appears in the award-winning collection, In Search of Warriors Dark and Strong and Other Poems

Memories - 1996

Memories

Memories of you flood my mind

like sunlight over the Georgia mountains

warming the dew into day.

You beckon me to play among the wildness

of your eyes, your fingers, your breath

beckoning me to love.

And I remember every touch, the heat

that overtakes me every time you’re near

and I cry remembering.

I remember when I am sleep

dreaming you are nearby,

breathing in rhythm,

loving me on the covers,

holding my heart in your hands.

You bleed into my life

                                    slowly

                                                            sweetly

                                                                                    methodically.

I remember your laughter

Sharp and guttural calling,

beckoning a smile

and charming me into your arms.

I remember your arms

strong and gentle

enwrapping me,

securing a future,

a life we can live.

I remember every detail.

The words escape me,

but not the outline of your love

overshadowing me.

The words, some of them are gone,

but not that gaze of desire or delight.

I remember your delight

heightening in my presence,

beckoning, inviting me.

And your eyes, and your lips, your lips.

And your dreams commingling

in our unified pain and hopes.

I remember our hope of a world, safe

For everyone who needs it.

Safe, I say, to love each other, safe.

I remember your love, safe and inviting

            honest

                                    fierce

piercing my disguise, daring me

to be real,

                        to be really

                                                to be me, to be.

I remember well the details.

© Valerie Bridgeman

1996

The Dead Only Visit the Crazy

The dead only visit the crazy

© Valerie Bridgeman

April 7, 2012

DRAFT

The dead only visit those of us crazy

enough to answer them back when they talk—

the living who stop to acknowledge

that business did not end because a car

wrapped itself around a tree, 
metal and wood fusing, pinning passengers

against branches as 90-mile-a-hour prayers

screamed last goodbyes

and the dead note that we forget to mention—

that until that very moment of crush and crash,

that tree had held its ground for decades,

maybe centuries, before door handles and windshield

picked apart its limbs, causing sod

to loosen its grip on roots

You died young; at least that is the story we

tell about you as we recount the times

you irritated us with your antics.

stories too numerous, but we try

to catalog them against the

fact that you are not here to

defend yourself

But you, looking over my shoulder,

try to correct our details, you want

to be remembered rightly

yet you have been dead long enough now

to know that the living prefer our lies.

the truth hurts our teeth,

and we devise legends over against the brutality

of details about when you walked home, barefoot

because you were too drunk to remember

where you left your shoes

or we recoil for the harsh and bitter words you

once used to cuss out the whole lot of us,

and walked away triumphant

while we struggled to figure out

what the next thing out of our mouths

should be, how we ought to answer you

and you mocked us with your wit—

cigarette hanging from the corner of your lips,

black from years of gin and smoking

you mock us still, even as you waver

in ethereal spaces between this world

and another that we do not know

me, the one listening to dead people talking,

hear you as you explain that death

is not what we imagined

you tell me we would do well

to pay attention to our children and

the games they play,

to hear the conversations

they hold with imaginary friends

to watch the way they stare

out into the night, heads cocked,

ears up, face glistening in the moonlight

you tell me—as I struggle to hear

your mother’s story about the day you were born—

that we ignore the children who can teach us

much about the dead and about the living

you tell me they have come, our children,

fresh from the place where the newly born

greet the newly dead as they pass

one another on their way

you, dead as dead can be, love talking to me

and I have not figured out how not to be crazy

to listen to truth as you speak

from beyond the grave

© Valerie Bridgeman

April 7, 2012


Edited/updated May 10, 2012

DRAFT

SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH

I am posting these 7 poems, written years ago and never published, in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I blogged about one of the incidences on my In This Place We Flesh blog, "I Didn't Call it Rape, Then." You can read it there. But here are poems, raw,  in need of editing and honing. Maybe one day I will. But today... in recognition that rape is a daily reality, and a constant threat to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, I offer these words for those who have not figured out how to "say it out loud." Not all of these are my personal stories, but they are common enough to stories I've told or heard over and over again. "Enjoy" is not the word I mean. But I do mean: let these truth-bearing poems speak. And share them. Thank you.

Kissing Cousins

She loved laying her head on his chest,

just under his chin.  Kissing cousins

is what people called them, and

they didn’t mind.

He always walked with his arm,

strong and tight around her waist. 

She felt safe in his world,

until the day, alone in a house

usually filled with laughter,

he wrapped his fingers around

her wrist and wrestled her

playfully, even gently, to the floor.

Her 13-year-old mind was dulled

by an aching pain--his knees

crushing into her inner thigh,

pinning the sorrow

into her nerves.

No!  She screamed, then whispered,

into the ear she had always trusted,

but there was no one to hear.

His face, the face she loved,

the face she often ran her finger

along the line of would-be

side burns--that face

was steel, with deadly eyes,

threatening her, daring her

to tell.  So she slept,

curled as in her mother’s womb,

with his semen running, thickening

to her knees, silent.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

Date Rape I

Bitch, he said.

Tonight, you gonna

fuck, fight, or

hitchhike, and she

got out of the car,

started walking

miles from home,

or any lights.

They were in deep

back woods country.

He could rape me,

kill me, she thought.

And no one would

know where to find me.

Terror covered her

like the darkness,

cloaking her with

a sickness that

reached her soul.

It was a football game

and a soda, she thought.

Not an invitation.

He drove off, kicking

gravel, hoping her fear

would be an aphrodisiac,

making her yield.

Twenty minutes later,

he returned to that road

and saw her, walking

hard like an angry woman,

her nostrils flaring with

a righteous fire.

She had decided

it would be a fight.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

Date Rape II

The months of hanging out

had eased into a “thing,”

and they knew a comfort

with each other neither

had found with anyone else.

So, when he took her

to his mother’s house

and in ten minutes

threw her hard against

the stereo, her back

jarred by the searing

sensation flowing

up and down her spine --

and the hard rock music

pulsing, loud through

her body, his tender hands

becoming a vise, his breath

fierce, his eyes nothing.

His fingers ripping

her panties, his knees

spreading her reluctant legs,

and terms of endearment

converting into threats,

menacing, carrying every

intent of harm if she did

not comply.

He doesn’t know, or care,

that she might have said

yes to him, that he did

not have to force her,

but it was too late to say

yes, and the music took root

in her heart, promising her,

things would never

be the same.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

Walking Sexy

She pounds the ground with her stride

in near-military fashion, walking hard,

so hard that each step jars her knees.

She walks fast as if the distance

between where she is and her

next destination will increase

in unmanageable increments.

She walks with her fingers curled

in an unconscious fist,

crossing streets when she is faced

with recognizable strange men.

She stopped gliding like liquid chocolate,

or flowing like gentle brooks

the day after the dangerous he

gripped her wrist, first playful,

then persistent saying, she asked for it.

It was obvious in the way

her mini-dress flirted with her thighs

as she approached him, walking sexy.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

Bruises

Bruises told her that the nightmare

had been real.  The bruises on

her thighs, where he pressed

his knees then his hands, then

his manhood were deep,

wide, purple,

the bruises on her wrist

were like bracelets,

two of a kind,

dark and brooding,

the bruises across her lip

where he clamped

his hand to hush her

crying was a faint ring,

but just as painful,

the bruises on her back

and hips where he

handled her like a

rag were broad

and titled,

the bruises on her soul,

imperceptible.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

How Many Times?

For Women

How many times have you been raped,

she asks, but I know she wants only

to know the times some man succeeded

in forcing himself into me — a cousin,

a family friend, a lover, a stranger . . . .

Not the near rapes where I fought

for my life, or the time Troy stopped

the elevator between floors and said:

when I see you, I don’t see married

or preacher, I see all woman,

then lay his suffocating body up

against me with the rise in his pants

thickening in my struggle.

She doesn’t mean the times I had

to physically remove a man’s hand

from my breasts because my

drop-dead look didn’t work.  In fact,

he said it turned him on.

Or, when I was 100 pounds, short

and sexy like Tony Braxton at the time,

feeling eyes undress me and make

love to me against my will.

Or, the times I went home and took

long showers trying to wash the filth

of a state hospital social worker

off my body.

He pushed himself up against me

from behind, and I turned around

swinging.  Get over it, chaplain.

This is the world, he said.

And I promised him that if he so much

as look at me wrong again, I would

start sexual harassment charges.

He laughed, called me crazy as

the inmates, said I needed to

grow up, be a big girl,

but he never touched me again.

She doesn’t mean the time I

reached to comfort a friend

who then tried to force a kiss

while groping up and down

my leg.

So, how many times

have you been raped?

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]

Stunning Revelations

A girl child ain’t safe in a house (world) full of men.

                        — Sophie, in The Color Purple

The first time I heard

Sophie say it, I was stunned,

and could not move for days.

I knew it was one of those

truths that is really true,

but rarely said.

A girl child—

of the female persuasion,

strong and weak, full

of promise, sometimes

trusting —

ain’t safe —

is always in danger, insecure

and must not let down

her guard in her own

house —

in a house —

a refuge from the pain

of living, a shelter

from dangerous

people —

full of men—

of the male persuasion,

weak and strong,

full of deception,

sometimes dangerous.

© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]