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 back yard.

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
I rise.

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It was a perfect language—
rarefied, precise, and all my own.
At three I spoke it fluently
to dust motes in prismatic light,
and to the bear who sang Brahms
each night as headlights prowled
across my bedroom walls.

Gillican gave voice to the night
my father scooped me out of bed
to see the northern lights,
to the witch who lived in granny's cellar,
who hid in ripples of sea-green glass.
It could evoke the ethereal spirit
of the stray cat we took in, moth-grey
fur in clumps, three legs, half a tail.

If Gillican had words for loss or death
I don't remember what they were.
I lost a red boot—stuck in the mud
when I fled from a giant bumblebee—
but it happened in a dream.
Animals died—old ewes, frumpy
in their tattered coats after shearing.
There was a word for orphans—lambs
who nuzzled our knees after we fed them—
and an expression for the black-eyed guppies
whose mother ate them up.

I made up a lovely name
for the tortoises from Galápagos,
the ones I sat on at the Reptile Gardens.
I saw them again last summer—
all of them were still alive, thriving
on melons and prickly pears
eaten in slow motion.

JANE MCKINLEY
The Georgia Review 
Fall 2010

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Thank Heavens for Angels

The skies are free from clouds,
On this late Saturday evening.
A boy sits hugging his knees,
Enduring the cool October breeze.

The ocean waves crash ashore,
Beating against the rocks below.
On this cliff standing tall,
He prepares to take a fall.

In love he is with a beautiful girl,
Now to tell her how he feels.
Panic bells ring around his ears,
As day dreams bring him to tears.

She found him sitting alone,
Wondering if anything was wrong.
A fake smile is all he could do,
While contemplating an 'I love you'

Before he could turn to speak,
She hushed his quivering lips.
Deep into his eyes she stared,
And told him how much she cared.

He apologizes to God in his mind,
'Sorry God, I'm stealing an angel'
He can see Heaven in her eyes,
It takes away all his butterflies.

He manages to say 'I love you'
She smiles and returns the words.
He looks at the Heavens above,
As he kisses his one true love.

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