There are many lesbians and gay men trapped by their fear into silence and invisibility, and they exist in a dim valley of terror wearing nooses of conformity.

There are no honest poems about dead women.

I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.

My fear of anger taught me nothing.

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.