Rage, rebirth, and the refusal to be tamed, this poetry doesn’t ask permission.
There’s a certain power in poetry that doesn’t soften its edges or apologize for taking up space. Dark feminine poetry explores the shadow side of being a woman, the part that society (the patriarchy) would rather keep polite and palatable. It embraces the emotion, the rage, and everything else that makes women the ungovernable spirits they are in the best possible way.
What makes dark feminine poetry so powerful is how it embraces duality. The sacred and the profane, beauty and terror, strength and softness, rage and grace, they all exist together. These poems channel the raw untamed aspects of feminine power that have always been there, but rarely get celebrated. They demand it all, fully, fiercely, and on their own terms.
So, whether you’re ready to burn and destroy, break free and reclaim archetypes, or simply explore parts of yourself that don’t fit into neat boxes, these poems won’t disappoint. Much like the women who wrote them, and the women who read them, they’re messy, honest, and absolutely unapologetic.
“I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies.”
– June Jordan
I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies, by June Jordan
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
>I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
and this is dedicated in particular
to those who hear my footsteps
or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery
cart
then turn around
see me
and hurry on
away from this impressive terror I must be:
More…
Phenomenal Woman, by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them,They think I’m telling lies.I say,It’s in the reach of my arms,The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman, That’s me. More…
“I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees. “
– Maya Angelou
what they don’t want you to know, by Amanda Lovelace
Lady Lazarus, by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight,My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?——More…
“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.”
-Sylvia Plath
Fire, by Nikita Gill
I’d Like a Little Flashlight, by Rachel Zucker
and I’d like to get naked and into bed and be hot radiating heat from the inside these sweaters and fleeceys do nothing to keep out the out or keep my vitals in—some drafty body I’ve got leaking in and out in all directions I’d like to get naked into bed but hot on this early winter afternoon already dusky grim and not think of all the ways I’ve gone about the world and shown myself a fool, shame poking holes in my thinned carapace practically lacy and woefully feminine I’d like to get naked into bed and feel if not hot then weightless as I once was in the sensory deprivation tank in Madison, Wisconsin circa 1992 I paid money for that perfectly body-temperatured silent pitch dark tank to do what? play dead and not die?
that was before email before children before I knew anything more than the deaths of a few loved ones which were poisoned nuts of swallowed grief but nothing of life of life giving which cuts open the self bursting busted unsolvable I’d like to get naked into the bed of my life but hot hot my little flicker-self trumped up somehow blind and deaf to all the dampening misery of my friends’ woe-oh-ohs and I’d like a little flashlight to write poems with this lousy day not this poem I’m writing under the mostly flat blaze of bulb but a poem written with the light itself a tiny fleeting love poem to life hot hot hot a poem that would say “oh look here a bright spot of life, oh look another!”
“I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission”
-Nikki Giovanni
Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why), by Nikki Giovanni
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
More…
Self Portrait as Lilith, by Elizabeth Acevedo
some days you seem
so disappointed, love but you knew
what it was.
i am your dread wife.
you will not throw me out
of eden i walk myself to the door.
o!
there is no snake i plant the tree.
i pluck the apple i bite.
the pomegranate the passion fruit
whatever the fuck.
i am feast unto myself.
in this wilderness the feral things name me.
& i was raised to one day wash
my husband’s feet at night.
of course i molted made myself a woman
who unmakes home.
More…
“my vow: break through this shell fully impossible.”
-Elizabeth Acevedo
“A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”
– Anne Sexton
Her Kind, by Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.
