“I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.”

“I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.”

“won't you celebrate with mewhat i have shaped intoa kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy other hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.”

“I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.”

“don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.”

“the lost womenI need to know their namesthose women I would have walked with,jauntily the way men go in groupsswinging their arms, and the onesthose sweating women whom I would have joinedAfter a hard game to chew the fatwhat would we have called each other laughingjoking into our beer? where are my gangs,my teams, my mislaid sisters?all the women who could have known me,where in the world are their names?”

“i am rejuvenated bones rising from the dear floor where they found you”