"Hanging Fire" Response

The poem "Hanging Fire," by Audre Lorde, doesn't seem like very much at first reading, in my opinion.

However, as I looked deeper into it, multiple meanings became apparent. The perspective of this poem is clearly one of a fourteen-year old girl going through that stage of life where she doesn't see the positive side of anything, and is extremely mad at the world. This is partly represented by the bleak style of the entire poem; it is simply worded and doesn't appear on the surface like the author put any real effort into it.

But she did.

What's so great about "Hanging Fire" is that it is accessible, with its easiness-to-read, yet there is much more hidden behind this simplicity.

There is the girl's discontent with her physical self: "...my skin has betrayed me/...how come my knees are/always so ashy..." Obviously, she doesn't know what's going on with her body and doesn't like it.

There are her fears: "what if I die/before morning (/graduation/[before I] grow up)/and momma's in the bedroom/with the door closed." While the repeated expression of "what if I die" can be attributed to her anger at the world (she doesn't really mean it), the phrase "and momma's in the bedroom/with the door closed" is repeated at the end of each stanza and clearly has meaning. It could mean that something's wrong with her mom, and she expressing that she's upset about it; the mom could be lying in bed in her bedroom alone.

Alternatively, "and momma's in the bedroom/with the door closed" could mean that the girl's mom is emotionally unavailable to her. The girl wants help, guidance and advice in a time like this, but she feels that her mom is doing nothing to help. The door is closed.

The second stanza is about school. Apparently there is a party coming up and the girl doesn't know how to dance. She is also growing too fast, apparently, as told by the line "my room is too small for me." This stanza just supports the message that the girl is not happy with her life.

The final stanza, stanza three, shows the girl's continued complaints about her life ("I should have been on the Math Team/...I have nothing to wear tomorrow") and ends with the cryptic, unsolved message: "and momma's in the bedroom/with the door closed."

I commented on Grant's, Cherish's and Sally's.