Coal

Audre Lorde writes about being black, black as coal. He starts the poem "Coal" with the word "I", letting you know he is using the coal as a reference to himself. He then moves on to talk about words as kinds of "open". These different things, words, are judged and heard a certain was depending on what color the person is that says it. His whole first paragraph describes this idea, saying that words are "colored by who pays what for speaking." "Some words are open like diamond on glass windows." This he means, is a word that rings our and cuts. Diamonds are the only jewel strong enough to cut glass. Then he says there are "words like stapled wagers in a perforated book." You use your words like writing checks. You choose your word, use it and then it is torn out of your book. What is left is just the stub. It's been ripped out and all that remains is a jagged edge like "an ill-pulled tooth." An ill-pulled tooth is very painful. Some words "live in my throat." He means he does not say them. Words he wants to say, but he never lets them come out to "know the sun". Some words "explode through my lips" without him really wanting them to come out. Then he speaks of the word love, "another kind of open." Take this word and make it a jewel in the sun. Make his word have as much pain on someone else as it does on him deep down inside.