house of yemaNAJA

Yemanja is an orisha, originally of the Yoruba religion, who has become prominent in many Afro-American religions. Africans, from what is now called Yorubaland, brought Yemaya/Yemoja and a host of other deities/energy forces in nature with them when they were brought to the shores of the Americas as captives. She is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a fierce protector of children.

This is an excerpt from the article Yemanjá from the Wikipedia free encyclopedia. A list of authors is available at Wikipedia.

From the House of Yemanjá
From the House of Yemanjá
By Audre Lorde 1934–1992 Audre Lorde
My mother had two faces and a frying pot where she cooked up her daughters into girls before she fixed our dinner.
My mother had two faces and a broken pot where she hid out a perfect daughter who was not me
I am the sun and moon and forever hungry for her eyes.

I bear two women upon my back one dark and rich and hidden in the ivory hungers of the other mother pale as a witch yet steady and familiar brings me bread and terror in my sleep her breasts are huge exciting anchors in the midnight storm.

All this has been before in my mother's bed time has no sense
I have no brothers and my sisters are cruel.

Mother I need mother I need mother I need your blackness now as the august earth needs rain.
I am

the sun and moon and forever hungry the sharpened edge where day and night shall meet and not be one. Share this text ...?Twitter Twitter Pinterest Pinterest
Audre Lorde, “From the House of Yemanjá” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Copyright © 1997 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted with the permission of Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.nortonpoets.com.

Source: The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1997)