Audre Lorde uses her poetic prose to express her feelings of anger and fury over an unfortunate incident which occurred in New York City in the late 1970's.  She shares her outrage and disgust at a racist society that can allow a child's death to be buried with no true justice found to help resolve the loss of a innocent child.  Audre Lorde adopted an African name at the end of her life, Gamba Adisa, which means "Warrior-She Who Makes Her Meaning Known." (1404)  This name she chose can help explain the role as a woman poet and writer she felt she had to play and why she wrote the various works that she produced throughout her life.  Lorde was brought up in Harlem and probably understood the difficulties people can encounter when race is involved.  In the poem the "Power" she is trying to use her poetic gift to stand up for these racial injustices and to try to make a conscience difference.  Lorde wants to be heard, instead of just using rhetoric and the art of effective writing, she is searching for the power she has as a African-American woman poet to make people hear and think about racial injustices.

     "Power" (1030) is a poem that has two different levels of meaning, literal and nonliteral.  The first being a narrative poem literally about Clifford Glover, a ten-year-old African-American Queens boy who was shot by a Caucasian police officer that was acquitted by a jury.  The second being the nonliteral, more poetic intent, Audre Lorde's reaction and feelings of fury and disgust over this incident.  She entangles this racial injustice with her own furious and unsatisfied feelings in this piece.  The first two stanzas are about Lorde's feelings and images she sees due to this violent tragedy.  The third stanza narrates the story of Clifford Glover's death and the taped proof of the racial insensitivity displayed by the police officer.  The fourth stanza talks of the trial of the officer and the jury that granted him an acquittal.  A jury made of mostly white men and only one African -American woman.  The last stanza returns back to the poets feelings about the injustice that the young boy received and her fury over it.  She evens shares her thoughts of what awful acts she might perform if she does not use her own power as an African-American woman with a poetic gift to find the difference in "...poetry and rhetoric...." (1030)

    The first stanza appears to be a mission statement that people should not just talk about something but do something instead and that something is putting our children first.  Lorde implies that protecting and providing for them the best that one can should be a priority that is acted on, not just talked about. Speaking about putting them first and doing it are two very different things as are "...poetry and rhetoric...." (1030)  Poetry is metrical composition in verse that uses figurative language, symbols, metaphors to help express aspects of internal and external realities in some meaningful way.  The key is the meaningful way.  Poets, as well as all artists, want to be heard and seen because they feel they have a meaningful point to be made, whatever the point may be.  The creator has created for a purpose and many times it is to speak out against wrongs and tragedies caused by hatred.  Rhetoric is only the art of writing and speaking effectively while poetry is the art of speaking emotionally and freely.  In this first stanza Lorde expresses her natural woman instinct that children must come first in a curt and short poetic verse.

    The first two lines in stanza two creates a horrific nightmare filled with bloody imagery of "...a dead child..." and "...a desert of raw gunshot wounds...."(1030)   Lorde's harsh images grabs your attention with such a shock that she hits right in the gut in the beginning of this stanza.  In line one she does not mean she is literally trapped on such an awful desert.  This appears to be a metaphor for her feeling surrounded by a society, which at the time was dealing with civil rights issues and racial injustices.  The desert represents a barren society incapable of sustaining life with its white male dominance controlling all.  "...as it sinks into the whiteness of the desert where I am lost..." (1030) In lines 10 and 11 she seems to feel unseen in this barren and cold city especially since she feels no one stood up and fought for this death of an innocent child.  Her thirst that she expresses in line nine is also not meant literally but more nonliterally.  Her thirst is for justice to prevail and the murderer should pay for his actions of that one day.  In line 13 Lorde describes another form of  power which is important to this piece since she titled it "Power."  She talks of "...trying to make power out of hatred and destruction." (1030)  This is not the type of power she is trying to obtain herself, but the power that is created and lives in men like the officer that took the boys life in this piece.  This line is about the abuse of power and political corruption seen due to this particular incident.  The last line in the second stanza says "...only the sun will bleach his bones quicker." (1030)  This may represent the political corruption seen in this case in Queens and that reference to bleaching could hint towards the racial problem that was at the root of this incident.  While in the line before she wanted to "...to heal my dying boy with kisses..."(1030) it appears that ending this whole travesty with some justice would have been the loving and just thing to do.  The kisses represent the love and compassion Lorde felt for this poor child.  This show the audience the loving natural mother instincts inside the poet.

    The third stanza is in more narrative form.  Line one tells the story of the shooting of the ten-year-old African-American boy by the policeman in Queens.  In the nest line the officer is standing over the boy and Lorde interestingly describes him standing in "...childish blood...." (1030)  This choice of language helps strike that humanitarian chord inside that the poet is looking to touch.  Again, artists tend to want to express meaning and get an emotional reaction from what is being read.  Line two in the third stanza reminds the audience of who the victim was, a child.  Lorde does not use much punctuation in her first two stanzas but in the third she does.  Her choice in punctuation  seems to accentuate her anger and disgust at the policeman's insensitive and racist remarks.  This makes them appear final and factual.  She also makes certain the audience knows that there were tapes to provide prove of these horrible monstrosities.  "...a voice said "Die you little motherfucker" and there are tapes to prove that...." (1030)

    Stanza four is still is narrative form this time talking more of the trial of the policeman.  The first two lines tell of the man being acquitted of the charges.  The next two lines are about the men who served on the jury.  There were "...11 white men..." (1030) who were convinced that the 13 year policeman did nothing wrong and "...justice had been done...." (1030)  This is a dig at how unfair the trial was and that no justice was found for the young boy, since the entire jury was dominated by white males except for one other individual.  In the rest of this stanza Lorde talks of the one African-American woman on the jury of Clifford Glover's trial.  Here she touches on the power of her role in the world and how easily one woman let "...white male approval..." (1030) take over her "...first real power..." (1030) by not standing ground for justice for this dead and unnecessarily murdered boy.  She uses a powerful image to express her fury at the one women on the jury who let how four centuries of oppression by white men conditioned her woman to forsake her own nature as a women, needless to say an African-American woman.  To adhere to her natural intuition to protect and seek truth for a child.  In line ten Lorde paints a interesting image "...and lined her womb with cement...." (1030)  This represents the natural mother in the woman that the white man tried to bury to achieve their decision and find their own justice.

    The last stanza returns to Lorde's emotional fury over this horrible loss.  In line one she talks of how she has "...not been able to touch the destruction within me...." (1030)  The destruction may represent her own hatred for the corruptness of white politics.  That corruption that she has not  given in to, yet.  In line two and three she talks again of using the difference she finds in poetry versus rhetoric.  This difference is meaningfully doing something against these type of injustices.  Line four of this stanza is extremely important to this poem.  "...my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold..."(1030) It expresses Lorde's own fears that she may fall prey to racially corruption due to this loss of faith in humanity and innocence.  She shows the audience what could happen if her own corruption takes hold.  In the last seven lines of the last stanza Lorde paints a violent revenge for justice against all the wrongs she has known.  The last two lines are extremely interesting.  A Greek chorus will sing, like they did during Greek tragedies in response to the play's action, "...Poor thing.  She never hurt a soul.  What beasts they are...."(1030)  At first it could appear that the sympathy is meant for the 85-year-old white women who was raped, beaten senseless, and then set a fire by Audre Lorde.  But it may also be for Audre Lorde herself, because she perhaps claims she was driven to such horrible racial revenge by white-male dominated society.  Perhaps both deserve the tragic chant of sympathy from the gods if such a thing were have ever happened.

     "Power" (1030) is a poem with a meaningful purpose intended by its author.  It poetically tells the story freely of racial injustice and the sacrifice of an innocence boy's last chance at equality which was condemned by white corrupt power.  Lorde tells the story of the death of a boy and uses graphic and dramatic imagery to capture the raw emotional feeling of a loss to ignorance.  She takes a bloody and critical view which reflects how sickened she truly was by hearing on the radio of the policeman's acquittal.  That day she heard the verdict she felt so furious and so stomach churning ill from the incident that she had to pull over and jot down her thoughts.  If these were the thoughts running through my head that were making my whole being ill - I too would need to write them down and get them out of my head.  Her harsh images ands racial digs in this piece do prompt an individual to stop and think, even get angry.  Lorde probably meant to point out this problem in its ugly light so to help avoid such tragic loses from happening again.  To ensure that not everyone will just step aside when it is their turn to protect and serve our youth of today.  Audre Lorde truly appears to be a "warrior' and she certainly has "made her meaning known" as her name, so appropriately means and her poetry so appropriately reflects to its audience.