Sublime

Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

Does my sexiness offend you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance as if I have diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? MAYA ANGELOU

I have found that battling despair does not mean closing my eyes to the enormity of the tasks of effecting change, nor ignoring the strength and the barbarity of the forces aligned against us. It means teaching, surviving and fighting with the most important resource I have, myself, and taking joy in that battle. It means, for me, recognizing the

I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness. We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. I am an anachronism, a sport, like the bee that was never meant to fly. Science said so. I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some

And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

Without community, there is no liberation. —AUDRE LORDE

Adrienne Rich’s book of poems, The Dream of a Common Language.