The Black Feminine Mystique: A Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award Finalist

By William E. Waters

The Black Feminine Mystique is a collection of poetry that celebrates women of color. It draws from mythology; from the many Black women heroines from history; from women living and dead; and from writers, artists, athletes, and women from the authors life, including but not limited to his four sisters and his mother. The Black Feminine Mystique paints a broad stroke from Isis to Ida B. Wells, from Hagar in the Wilderness to Winnie Mandela, and from the so-called Hottentot Venus to Venus Williams. One writer said that miscegenation created fifty-five shades, which is part of the Black Feminine Mystique.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496958754

William E. Waters

William E. Waters is an award-winning poet, playwright, and author. His poetry has been in a number of anthologies and magazines, including Rattle and AIM. In 1998, he was the cowinner of the Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize for his epic poem, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present, published in 2000 by Edwin Mellen Poetry Press. He reissued this book in 2013 through AuthorHouse. He is also the author of Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, a National Poetry Series finalist, a collection of poetry about law enforcement excesses, which was published by AuthorHouse in 2013. Waters has a master’s degree from New York Theological Seminary and bachelor’s degrees from SUNY New Paltz and Albany University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Book preview

AFRICAN EVE

Greeks called your children sun-burnt,

Blamed Phaeton’s joy-ride in Helius’ chariot for your hue.

But your dusky skin was no mere accident.

You were formed from Africa’s dark earth.

We speak with the authority of science:

You’re the oldest woman known to us,

About three and a half million years old.

Strands of your DNA course throughout humankind,

Connecting us in ways we never imagined.

Millennia ago you walked the earth,

Not a primate, but the primordial Mother.

Anthropologists call you Lucy, the first woman,

The progenitor of the human race.

Science has reconstructed your face.

THE GIVER OF RAIN

The priests exited the temple with bowed heads.

They’d talked long and hard with the angry gods,

Were told the dry land needed water.

The people knew what this meant:

That one girl must die for the nation.

Worried women wondered if she’d be a child from their wombs.

Remembering anxious moments writ on their mothers’ faces,

They called their daughters to them, looked them over good.

Prototypes of pulchritude -- just as the gods liked them.

One mother heard the dreaded knock on the door.

Of all the girls, they’d come for her daughter.

From the top of the temple the girl fell to the earth.

Her virgin blood was devoured by the dry land.

As her spirit rose, the rain began to fall.

A SISTER IN THE WILDERNESS: REMEMBERING HAGAR

As a runaway slave you encountered God in the wilderness,

Spoke with Him as you had in your prayers.

You were surprised that He told you to return to your master.

For wasn’t God a Liberator and wouldn’t He act as such?

Then why did He have you return to a cruel mistress?

She’d given you to her husband, because she was barren.

You conceived a son, entitled to the birthright.

Despite your better judgment, you obeyed God;

And then He did something inexplicable:

He answered her prayers, gave her a son, too.

Before the brothers could become rivals, she put you out the house.

You were back in the wilderness, this time with your son.

Black women look to your story for spiritual guidance,

Because even when you were alone you managed to survive.

CLEOPATRA

To the Romans you were a Circe,

A woman of incomparable charms.

You cast a spell on two of their greatest men.

This had to be "Black