5 Inspiring poems for black women

by Sandra Mokom | Jan 22, 2020 | Poems

 I hope these five black poems strengthen your spirit as you read, for they are masterpieces crafted with love, magic, whispers and sighs. 

Only a Black woman can know what has been denied other Black women. Only a Black woman can give us the words we need to weave gold and silver threads into the tapestry of our lives. “O ye daughters of Africa, arise! arise! awake!”

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Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

To a Dark Girl by Gwendolyn B. Bennett

I love you for your brownness

And the rounded darkness of your breast

I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice

And shadows where your wayward eye-lids rest.

Something of old forgotten queens

Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk

And something of the shackled slave

Sobs in the rhythm of your talk

Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate

Keep all you have of queenliness

Forgetting that you were once were slave

And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

I am a black woman by Mari Evans

I am a black woman

the music of my song

some sweet arpeggio of tears

is written in a minor key

and I

can be heard humming in the night

Can be heard

humming

in the night

I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea

and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath

from my issue in the canebrake

I lost Nat’s swinging body in a rain of tears

and heard my son scream all the way from Anzio

for Peace he never knew….I

learned Da Nang and Pork Chop Hill

in anguish

Now my nostrils know the gas

and these trigger tired fingers

seek the softness in my warrior’s beard

I am a black woman

tall as a cypress

strong

beyond all definition still

defying place

and time

and circumstance

assailed

impervious

indestructible

Look

on me and be

renewed

To Black Women by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sisters,

where there is cold silence

no hallelujahs, no hurrahs at all, no handshakes,

no neon red or blue, no smiling faces

prevail.

Prevail across the editors of the world

who are obsessed, self-honeying and self-crowned

in the seduced arena.

It has been a

hard trudge, with fainting, bandaging and death.

There have been startling confrontations.

There have been tramplings. Tramplings

of monarchs and of other men.

But there remain large countries in your eyes.

Shrewd sun.

The civil balance.

The listening secrets.

And you create and train your flowers still.

Phenomenal woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.   

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

the palm of my fhand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

I love black poems so I’m always searching for them. You might want to recommend any other black poems you know in the comments section.