## **Excerpt from “Praise Song for the Black Women Poets of This Century”** They write the body back to itself. They write Black girlhood in full color. They write mothers, lovers, fugitives, saints, skeptics, dreamers, and witnesses. Their lines refuse erasure. Their metaphors carry water to generations thirsty for a language of becoming. And when they speak, the page does not remain a page— it becomes a doorway, a gathering, a drumbeat, a dawn.