Audre Lorde published "Power" in 1978. The poem was written in response to the death of Clifford Glover, a 10-year-old Black child who, in 1973, was shot and killed by a white police officer named Thomas Shea. Without identifying the subjects by name, Lorde portrays Glover's death in graphic detail, expressing deep rage and sorrow over the brutality of his killing. "Power" also speaks to the systemic racism that led to Shea's acquittal by a jury of eleven white people and a single black person. Featuring stark free verse and intense imagery, "Power" condemns racial injustice and police brutality in America, while also capturing one writer's search for words that can make a difference.
The speaker says that poetry and rhetoric are two distinct forms of language and that poetry is like willingly sacrificing your own life in order to save your children.
The speaker feels like she's lost in a desert surrounded by fresh, painful gunshot wounds. All she can think about when trying to sleep is a dead Black child whose face and body have been torn apart by bullets, the blood pouring from his wounds becoming the only liquid in this desert. The speaker can practically taste it, and this makes her sick. But she is desperately thirsty; her mouth is dry and cracking and, seemingly of its own accord, longing for the boy's wet blood as it sinks into the sand that surrounds the speaker in this vast desert. There's no beauty or magic to help her find her way. She wants to turn this boy's death, and the hatred that surrounds it, into some kind of power, which she can then use to heal him. But before she can do so, his bones are bleached by the hot sun.
The speaker recounts the story of a young boy in Queens, New York, who was shot and killed by a policeman. The policeman stood in the child's pooling blood and told him to die. He was caught saying those words on tape. When he was tried for murder, the policeman claimed that he saw only the boy's race and that's why he killed him. He was caught saying those words on tape too.
The policeman, who is 37 years old and has been a policeman for 13 years, was acquitted today. A jury consisting of 11 white men said that they thought this was the right thing to do. The one Black woman on the jury agreed with the others, though she really had no choice but to agree; for centuries, the speaker points out, Black women have had to go along with what white men say in order to earn their approval. Even though the Black woman had some power on this jury, she gave it up in that moment, forced to harden her feelings toward a child of her own race and instead become complicit in the deaths of Black children everywhere.
The speaker says that she's been trying and failing to dig into her feelings of anger and pain. She wants her poetry to be truthful and meaningful, not empty rhetoric. If she fails to write genuine poetry, then the power she could harness through poetry will become rotten, useless, wasted. And eventually, that wasted power will boil over and explode, and pushing the speaker to take some horrible action, like brutally raping and beating and burning an elderly white woman, a mother herself. If the speaker were to do that, she knows that society would pity the white woman and sing the same old tune: "She didn't deserve to die, that harmless woman. Those people are animals."
In “Power,” the speaker, whom readers can take to be a representation of the poet Audre Lorde herself, struggles with how to use language to express her response to the racist killing of a Black child. Throughout the poem, the speaker contrasts “poetry” with “rhetoric.” “Poetry,” here, seems to refer to language infused with truth, lived experience, and genuine passion—the kind of language that spurs action, and through which the speaker wants to channel her “power.” “Rhetoric,” meanwhile, is nice-sounding but ultimately empty speech—words that might seem logical or convincing but aren’t backed by the conviction that fuels true poetry.
Claiming that “The difference between poetry and rhetoric / is being ready to kill / yourself / instead of your children," the speaker equates poetry with the willingness to act; “poetry,” the speaker implies, is a kind of selfless conviction felt in the soul. Poetry isn’t always pretty, but it’s truthful—and thus less susceptible to corruption than slippery rhetoric. This latter kind of language might sound nice, but it doesn’t have the same tether of conviction and thus lacks poetry’s “power.” Such rhetoric might include the kind of language that the jury used to acquit the policeman in the poem—language that proved persuasive, but was rooted more in racism and injustice than in deeply-held ideals or beliefs.
As she writes about the murder that inspired this poem, the speaker fears being unable to “learn to use / the difference between poetry and rhetoric." The speaker describes the writing process as an attempt to transform “hatred and destruction” into “power,” which speaks to the capacity of language to be a force for change. But, importantly, the speaker doesn’t just want to jot down any words—she wants to capture her feelings and the horror of the situation objectively, properly, rather than cloak them in pleasant rhetoric. In other words, she believes that art has power, but she struggles with how to turn the horror of this murder into art. She feels lost, looking for the “imagery or magic” often associated with poetry, perhaps because poetic devices might feel like empty, inappropriate “rhetoric” here.
Ultimately, the speaker believes that poetry must come from mining the deep devastation she feels in response to this child’s death—but mining such pain is, of course, painful. Writing that she “[has] not been able to touch the destruction / within me,” the speaker indicates that she has been trying, and failing, to create poetry that properly expresses the anger inside her. And for the speaker, figuring out a way to “touch” those feelings is imperative. She needs to use her “power,” because otherwise that power will “run corrupt” or “lie limp and useless.”
Put differently, the speaker fears that she might become a passive bystander, or even worse, that her rage might spill over into new violence if she doesn't learn how to channel her feelings into poetry that makes a difference. Lorde's poem thus captures the capacity that language can have to sway human behavior and release intense emotions, while also demonstrating that choosing the right language can be both very important and challenging.
The speaker of “Power” is haunted by the death of a Black boy killed by a racist white police officer. The poem illustrates the pain and burden of living in a deeply prejudiced society, demonstrating how racism is at once gut-wrenching, oppressive, and so infuriating that it can potentially spark violence.
Throughout “Power,” the speaker exposes the horror of the overt racism of her world. Lorde’s rich imagery captures the brutality of the boy's death, which the speaker repeatedly points out was an act based borne of racial hatred. But to the speaker, the child’s death isn’t just horrific: it’s also emblematic of the senseless, terrible violence that has been inflicted against Black people throughout history, and the quick acquittal of the boy’s white killer reflects “four centuries” of racial injustice. In other words, this child’s death is terrible, but not an isolated or new event.
The speaker also illustrates how deep-seated, systemic racism doesn’t just perpetuate violence and injustice: it can even force people to become complicit in their own oppression. Describing the officer’s trial, the speaker notes how the “one black Woman” on the otherwise all-white jury was “convinced” of the officer’s innocence, not necessarily out of any real conviction, but because her small body had been metaphorically “dragged […] over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval.”
In other words, the speaker believes the historical relationship between white men and Black women in America meant that she had to agree with the white men’s assessment of the crime; she didn’t have enough social or political power to assert her own opinion. Racism is so deeply ingrained that the woman was either too afraid to speak up or knew her voice would be overruled, regardless of what she said. As a result, the Black woman on the jury “[made] a graveyard for our children,” becoming a passive bystander in a hate crime rather than trying to protect future Black boys. And this, the speaker says, is another painful way in which a racist society maintains the status quo: forcing Black people like this jury member to “let go” even of “the first real power” they attain.
In a society that not only lets white men get away with killing Black boys but also pushes Black women to metaphorically fill their own “womb[s] with cement,” the speaker feels an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and despair. The speaker writes that she is “trapped on a desert,” suggesting that the world around her seems barren, hopeless, and stifling. The image of the dead boy’s “blood” being “the only liquid for miles” suggests that the speaker can only think about the murder, which fills her with a desperate desire to do something despite knowing how difficult creating change will be—that "the sun will bleach" the boy's "bones" more quickly than she can "heal" him.
The speaker then ends the poem with a disturbing image: she imagines that if she doesn’t learn how to harness the power of her words, her thwarted power might bubble over into senseless violence against an elderly white woman. Yet she also knows that should she resort to violence, white society won’t understand; instead, people will express sympathy for the white victim and use the speaker’s violence to reaffirm the racist belief that Black people like the speaker are “beasts”—that they are simply prone to violence, rather than pushed to desperation by a society that kills their children.
“Power” alludes to the real-world racist killing of a young Black boy, Clifford Glover, by a white policeman named Thomas Shea. Through graphic imagery and vivid language, the speaker condemns police brutality against Black people and implies that the American justice system is essentially designed to protect systemic racism rather than dismantle it.
Even though she doesn’t name the people involved, Lorde gives a fairly direct summary of the murder of Clifford Glover, portraying the crime as an undeniable instance of racist police brutality. The speaker writes that the officer “shot down a ten year old,” the phrase “shot down” capturing the mindless and crude violence of the crime. Lorde even quotes from tapes that caught Shea saying, “Die you little motherfucker,” and “I didn’t notice the size nor nothing else / only the color.”
To Shea, apparently, Glover was nothing more than his skin color. And because of that skin color, Shea clearly viewed his victim as less than human: in the trial, he admitted, “I didn’t notice the size nor nothing else / only the color.” Referring to “the size,” rather than his size, the policeman suggests that Glover was an object rather than a person. He saw the boy’s size and “color,” but nothing else; his race made him less than human in the eyes of his killer.
Yet despite the obvious racism and cruelty of the policeman’s words, the speaker notes that he made these claims “in his own defense.” He seemed to trust that the criminal justice system would protect him from repercussions, validating his racism and letting him get away with killing a child. And that’s exactly what happened: the nearly all-white jury set Shea “free,” having been “satisfied / justice had been done.” This acquittal, the speaker implies, is a classic example of how the justice system perpetuates white supremacy, protecting white people in positions of authority rather than getting actual justice for Black victims of racist violence.
The speaker is clearly disgusted at the policeman's acquittal, and she feels her own rage and despair threaten to bubble over into further violence. Given the way the murder torments the speaker, “Power” demonstrates that police brutality is a terrible yet deeply entrenched part of racial injustice in America.
The difference between ...
... of your children.
Lorde opens by setting up one of the poem's central themes. In a powerful, if somewhat cryptic, statement, the speaker contrasts "poetry" and "rhetoric," two different forms of language. She aligns poetry with "being ready to kill / yourself / instead of your children," suggesting that poetry involves passion, conviction, and even bravery. In contrast, rhetoric is presumably more passive, even cowardly; the implication is that those who speak or listen to rhetoric don't share the strong beliefs that inspire poetry.
This first stanza also sets the style and tone for the rest of the poem. Lorde relies heavily on enjambment, breaking this sentence into four lines without any punctuation (except for the final period). The first line, "The difference between poetry and rhetoric," stands out on a line longer than the ones that follow, hinting that this "difference" will be an important theme throughout the poem. Similarly, the second line feels stark and violent, as it breaks off right after the word "kill." Right away, the speaker thus indicates that the poem will involve themes of violence, and her impassioned tone begins to show.
Additionally, the idea of killing oneself versus one's children points to the murder Lorde discusses throughout the poem, as well as the Black jury member's decision to acquit Thomas Shea—which, in a way, made her complicit in the killing of Black children, even if she had no real choice but to succumb to her fellow jury members' courtroom rhetoric.
I am trapped ...
... of my sleep
blood from his ...
... I am lost
without imagery or ...
... his bones quicker.
A policeman who ...
... At his trial
this policeman said ...
... prove that, too.
Today that 37 ...
... had been done
and one Black ...
... for our children.
I have not ...
... an unconnected wire
and one day ...
... beasts they are.”
The "dead child" described in the poem is based on a real person: Clifford Glover, who was shot and killed by a police officer in 1973. While alluding to this literal crime, Lorde also uses language related to mothers and children symbolically throughout the poem. Children, here, represent Black youth more broadly as well as the promise of the future in general. Motherhood, meanwhile, represents the kind of selflessness, strength, and courage required in the present if anyone is to see that future come to light.
In the first stanza, the speaker references parenthood when describing the difference between "poetry and rhetoric": poetry requires a kind of selflessness and sacrifice in the name of saving your children—helping the next generation, even if it means "being ready to kill yourself." Parenthood is thus tied to a deep sense of responsibility and conviction.
In the second stanza, the speaker refers more specifically to motherhood when calling the "dead child" she envisions in the desert her own "son." The speaker doesn't (or doesn't only) mean that this boy is literally her son; instead, she uses this language to imply that violence against one Black child is violence against all Black children. In other words, the violence the poem describes isn't an isolated incident, but rather part of a broader pattern of racist violence that threatens to destroy Black people's futures in general.
Later, the speaker describes the "one Black Woman" on the jury as "lin[ing] her own womb with cement" upon acquitting the policeman who killed this child. In choosing her own wellbeing over that of "our children," this woman thus followed the path of "rhetoric" rather than "poetry." She betrayed the symbolic tenents of motherhood and her responsibility to the next generation, as presented by the poem. And in doing so, the speaker says, she made "a graveyard for our children"—that is, she preserved a status quo in which Black children could be killed with seeming impunity.
Finally, the speaker takes care to note that the elderly white woman whom she imagines brutally raping and murdering at the end of the poem "is somebody's mother." Again, motherhood is presented as a kind of sacred relationship in the poem—one that could theoretically connect this white woman with the speaker. Mentioning motherhood here reiterates the humanity of this white woman while subtly implying that the speaker, and other Black mothers, are denied that same humanity by the rest of society.
In describing her response to Glover's death, the speaker writes that she is "trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds." Here, the desert symbolizes the speaker's sense of helplessness and distress. She feels "lost," unable to find logic or reason in the murder of an innocent young boy. Like someone seeking water, desperately thirsty, while wandering in the desert, the speaker seeks to understand the murder, with a desperation she expresses by saying she thirsts for the dead child's blood.
Because the desert is filled with "whiteness" (as well as a scorching sun), it also symbolizes the speaker's sense of powerlessness in a racist world. She feels as if the world doesn't care about the Black boy's death: his blood "sinks" directly into the "whiteness" all around her, leaving her unable to do anything to help him or other Black victims.
Lorde uses enjambment consistently throughout "Power." In fact, only a handful of lines actually end with punctuation. Throughout the poem, the lines vary drastically in length: some are as little as one word long, while others cover entire clauses. The frequent, sometimes sudden line breaks determine the rhythm of the poem, which has no consistent form, meter, or rhyme scheme.
At certain moments, Lorde's use of enjambment sets a dramatic and intense tone. By stopping after the word "kill" in line 2, for example, Lorde leaves the reader in momentary suspense, which only increases with the word "yourself" standing alone on the following line:
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
Read one way, it seems almost as if the speaker means that the "difference between poetry and rhetoric" is being ready to die by suicide—when in fact, the speaker is talking about self-sacrifice. Moments like these keep the reader engaged, wondering what the speaker really means when she introduces dramatic images.
In the second stanza, the lack of punctuation makes the poem flow quickly and breathlessly. Breaks in the middle of clauses—like between "while" and "my" in lines 11 and 12, or between "whiteness" and "of" in lines 15 and 16—make the speaker seem as if she is gasping, stumbling through her words without any capacity to stop:
churns at the imagined taste while
my mouth splits into dry lips
[...]
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
In addition to these influences on tone, Lorde uses enjambment to set apart particularly shocking phrases. For example, "justice had been done" stands alone on line 33, hinting that the speaker finds this notion unbelievable—of course justice hadn't actually been done when Shea was set free. And in lines 43-44, breaking before the words "within me" draws attention back to the speaker's interior self, reminding the reader that she is deeply focused on her emotions and intent on using them to drive her poetry.
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
Language designed to persuade an audience, but lacking in meaning, sincerity, or conviction.
"Power" is a free verse poem with 55 lines broken up into five stanzas of different lengths. Most of the lines are enjambed, which adds to the breathless, urgent tone.
In a poem concerned with the writing of poetry itself, the fact that the speaker doesn't follow any regular form matters. Anything more rigid or conventionally "poetic" would likely feel too artificial or constructed here—too much like "rhetoric"—and would thus be unsuited to a poem in which the speaker seeks to translate her raw emotions into "power." Instead, the speaker lets her language flow freely and organically down the page.
"Power" doesn't have any formal meter. Instead, the poem uses free verse, which means there are no rules guiding line length, rhythm, or rhyme scheme. This keeps the poem's language sounding real, raw, and grounded rather than strictly controlled or forced into an unnatural beat. Readers get the sense that they are privy to the speaker's innermost monologue rather than some artfully constructed, but perhaps less genuine, work.
That's not to say that the poem's language isn't very deliberate! On the contrary, Lorde uses devices such as enjambment, consonance, and repetition to elevate the poem's language and call attention to its visceral imagery.
As a free verse poem, "Power" does not have a set rhyme scheme. In fact, there are very few instances of rhyme in the poem. Instead of rhyme, Lorde focuses more on imagery and diction: the language in the poem is poignant and powerful, but not necessarily lyrical.
That said, one instance of internal rhyme stands out. In line 12, the phrase "splits into dry lips" includes an imperfect rhyme between the words "splits" and "lips." The effect is subtle, but this loose rhyme hints at the speaker's poetic aspirations. The speaker might be more focused on metaphor, imagery, and other poetic devices, but she is certainly aware of how her words sound. Beyond this moment, the lack of rhyme scheme helps keep attention on the themes and imagery of "Power," as well as on the speaker's passion and determination throughout the poem.
The speaker of "Power" never actually identifies herself, but readers can take her to be a projection of Audre Lorde. She speaks in the first person, and she expresses feelings toward Glover's death that seem to come directly from Lorde. After all, like Lorde, the speaker identifies as a poet. She wants to write about the horrific events of the murder, and "Power" is presumably the result of that urge to process her emotions through writing.
Throughout the actual poem, however, the speaker reveals little about herself, other than the fact that Glover's death is haunting her, preventing her from sleeping at night, and inspiring her to "touch the destruction" inside her and turn it into poetry.
Presumably, the speaker herself is Black, as she refers to "our children" when discussing how the Black woman on the jury couldn't protect Glover and other Black victims of police brutality. Throughout the poem, the speaker's feelings seem to grow only more intense, perhaps because she is struggling to describe Glover's death and feels increasingly frustrated at her own powerlessness to combat racism and injustice.
"Power" doesn't have a specific setting: readers never learn where the speaker is as she writes the poem. However, the speaker does write that "Today that 37 year old white man" was set free, which situates the poem in the speaker's present. Specifically, the word "Today" suggests that the poem occurs on June 12, 1974, the date that Thomas Shea was acquitted for the killing of Clifford Glover. It's also worth noting that the trial occurred in New York City, and that the murder took place in Queens early in the morning on April 28, 1973.
Audre Lorde published "Power" in a 1978 collection titled The Black Unicorn. "Power" is similar to Lorde's other work in that it engages directly with the racism Lorde saw all around her in 1970s America.
Lorde had begun publishing poetry regularly in the 1960s, and by the time she published "Power" in 1978, she was a prominent voice in the Black Arts Movement. This was a Black-led art movement that emphasized activism and Black pride. Like Lorde, many Black authors of the period—including Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison, to name just a few—focused on themes of racism, sexism, and other injustices in their work.
As the social issues addressed in "Power" persist today, later poets have continued to cover similar themes, using their poetry to expose and combat racism in America. For example, "what the dead know by heart" by Donte Collins also discusses police brutality, as does Danez Smith's "juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet" and Ross Gay's "A Small Needful Fact." Other artists have referenced the specific killing of Glover as well; The Rolling Stones, for example, mention it in their song "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)."
"Power" responds to the shooting of Clifford Glover, a 10-year-old Black boy, by a white police officer named Thomas Shea in 1973. Shea and his partner were working undercover in Queens, New York, when they stopped Glover and his stepfather, thinking they'd taken part in a robbery. Fearing for their own safety, Glover and his stepfather ran from the plainclothes officers, at which point Shea shot Glover in the back.
Shea was put on trial for murder, becoming the first on-duty officer in New York for nearly 50 years to be charged with such a crime. He was acquitted by a jury consisting, as "Power" points out, of 11 white men and a single Black woman. The verdict led to protests in Queens.
Lorde explained that she wrote "Power" as an immediate response to news that Shea had been acquitted: "A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red," Lorde said. "I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem."
"Jury Clears Shea in Killing of Boy" — Read The New York Times's article about Shea's acquittal from June 13, 1974.
"Echoing Since 1973" — Read a New York Times article written shortly after the murder of Walter Scott, who was shot in the back by a police officer in 2015. The author explores how the crime echoes Glover's killing many decades earlier.
Audre Lorde's Biography — Read about the poet's life and literary works.
"Power" Out Loud — Listen to "Power" read aloud.