"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

 When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

     ~Audre Lorde  

  The late Audre Lorde is a Carribean-American feminist, civil rights activist, lesbian poet. She started her care writing love poems and was featured in a Seventeen magazine issue. Her inspiration transferred, however, when the civil rights movement emerged in America. She expressed her liberal views and her struggle as a lesbian in an unaccepting community. 

"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

I am fourteen 

and my skin has betrayed me   

the boy I cannot live without   

still sucks his thumb 

in secret 

how come my knees are 

always so ashy 

what if I die 

before morning 

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed. 

I have to learn how to dance   

in time for the next party   

my room is too small for me   

suppose I die before graduation   

they will sing sad melodies   

but finally 

tell the truth about me 

There is nothing I want to do   

and too much 

that has to be done 

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed. 

Nobody even stops to think   

about my side of it 

I should have been on Math Team   

my marks were better than his   

why do I have to be 

the one 

wearing braces 

I have nothing to wear tomorrow   

will I live long enough 

to grow up 

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed.

      This poem serves as an anthem to all American teenagers struggling with insecurity or anxiety. The speaker is intended to be younger, and slightly in focused. She is insecure about her dancing and and goes off into many different directions just in the first stanza. This emphasizes the speakers youth and confusion and creates an anxious worrysome tone. The first stanza ends with her "momma's door closed" to represent the common loneliness and thirst for love in all teens. In the second stanza the speaker continues with her worrysome tone and in the last stanza she shifts to a slightly more lonesome depressed tone. She wonders why no one believe her side of the story. Parents always take the "adult side" and the speaker expresses the effect this has had on her. This poem is rather short and lines are pithy. This shows how fast and common these thoughts are in people of the authors age. Teenagers have a wide range of emotions and thoughts that all cycle in the course of mere minutes. The author, being extremely libera, probably felt at times uncomfortable or worrysome/insecure in certain, unaccepting situations. She illuminates that feeling for the audience so that they may feel it as well and perhaps relate.