with audre in mind

audre once said

"we were never meant to survive.”

does that matter at all?

Black women have always

and undoubtedly will always outlive Death.

she created the space for it

to dig its fangs into Life which she,

herself made, and allowed it to suck from her.

the death of a Black woman

who may not even know

she herself was ancestry

—that she begat the earth—

has yet again birthed the world…

through "modern" medicine.

then, what pray tell is She?

the birther of this earth.

we are made of Black women

but we were told we came from earth, from dust.

She—must be—is the all three.

we eat from earth, we eat from her.

we, in too many ways, nourish ourselves on the backs, and breasts, and blood of Black women.

[this poem includes women of the trans experience, all Black women means all Black women]