A Voice from the South / By a Black Woman of the South

by Anna J. Cooper

Your snowy limbs, your blood’s patrician blue

Shall be

Tainted by me,

And I will set my seal upon your face!

Yea, I will dash my blackness down your veins,

And through your nerves my sensuousness I’ll fling;

Your lips, your eyes, shall bear the musty stains

Of Congo kisses,

While shrieks and hisses

Shall blend into the savage songs I sing!