Category Maya Angelou

Fightin’ was natural, hurtin’ was real, and the leather like lead on the end of my arm was a ticket to ride to the top of the hill. Fightin’ was real. The sting of the ointment and scream of the…

Preacher, don’t send me when I die to some big ghetto in the sky where rats eat cats of the leopard type and Sunday brunch is grits and tripe. I’ve known those rats I’ve seen them kill and gritsI’ve had…

She lay, skin down in the moist dirt, the canebrake rustling with the whispers of leaves, and loud longing of hounds and the ransack of hunters crackling the near branches. She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward freedom, I…

What words have smashed against these walls, crashed up and down these halls, lain mute and then drained their meanings out and into these floors? What feelings, long since dead, streamed vague yearnings below this ceiling light? In some dimension,…

There are many and more who would kiss my hand, taste my lips, to my loneliness lend their bodies’ warmth. I have want of a friend. There are few, some few, who would give their names and fortunes rich or…

Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million incensed gestures stand between your love and me. Your agape sacrifice is reduced to colored glass, vapid penance, and the tedium of ritual. Your footprints yet mark the crest of billowing seas but…

If I remember correctly, London is a very queer place. Mighty queer. A million miles from jungle, and the British lion roars in the stone of Trafalgar Square. Mighty queer. At least a condition removed from Calcutta, but old men…

Glory falls around us as we sob a dirge of desolation on the Cross and hatred is the ballast of the rock which lies upon our necks and underfoot. We have woven robes of silk and clothed our nakedness with…

But of course you were always nothing. No thing. A red-hot rocket, patriotically bursting in my veins. Showers of stars—cascading stars behind closed eyelids. A searing brand across my forehead. Nothing of importance. A four-letter word stenciled on the flesh…

Televised news turns a half-used day into a waste of desolation. If nothing wondrous preceded the catastrophic announcements, certainly nothing will follow, save the sad-eyed faces of bony children, distended bellies making mock at their starvation. Why are they always…