Chapin City Blues

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.

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was an American writer, civil rights activist, poet, and intersectional feminist. Her works include The Black Unicorn, From a Land Where Other People Live, and The Cancer Journals, in which she accounts her experience to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy. You can read “A Woman Speaks” in its entirety in The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde.