Lucille Clifton

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon babylon Once a great city in Biblical times, see Psalms 137. both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between between / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” starshine and clay, between / starshine and clay Compare to John Keats’s “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” in “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.” my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.

i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. i wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.

the green of Jesus is breaking the ground and the sweet smell of delicious Jesus is opening the house and the dance of Jesus music has hold of the air and the world is turning in the body of Jesus and the future is possible

who would believe them winged who would believe they could be beautiful         who would believe they could fall so in love with mortals that they would attach themselves as scars attach and ride the skin sometimes we hear them in our dreams rattling their skulls         clicking their bony fingers envying our crackling hair our spice filled flesh they have heard me beseeching as I whispered into my own cupped hands       enough not me again enough       but who can distinguish one human voice amid such choruses of desire

for the eyes of the children, the last to melt, the last to vaporize, for the lingering eyes of the children, staring, the eyes of the children of buchenwald, of viet nam and johannesburg, for the eyes of the children of nagasaki, for the eyes of the children of middle passage, for cherokee eyes, ethiopian eyes, russian eyes, american eyes, for all that remains of the children, their eyes, staring at us, amazed to see the extraordinary evil in ordinary men.

loaded like spoons into the belly of Jesus where we lay for weeks for months in the sweat and stink of our own breathing Jesus why do you not protect us chained to the heart of the Angel where the prayers we never tell and hot and red as our bloody ankles Jesus Angel can these be men who vomit us out from ships called Jesus    Angel    Grace of God onto a heathen country Jesus Angel ever again can this tongue speak can these bones walk Grace Of God can this sin live

for elaine philip on her birthday me and you be sisters. we be the same. me and you coming from the same place. me and you be greasing our legs touching up our edges. me and you be scared of rats be stepping on roaches. me and you come running high down purdy street one time and mama laugh and shake her head at me and you. me and you got babies got thirty-five got black let our hair go back be loving ourselves be loving ourselves be sisters. only where you sing i poet.

if there is a river more beautiful than this bright as the blood red edge of the moon          if there is a river more faithful than this returning each month to the same delta          if there is a river braver than this coming and coming in a surge of passion, of pain          if there is a river more ancient than this daughter of eve mother of cain and of abel          if there is in the universe such a river          if there is some where water more powerful than this wild water pray that it flows also through animals beautiful and faithful and ancient and female and brave

oh antic God return to me my mother in her thirties leaned across the front porch the huge pillow of her breasts pressing against the rail summoning me in for bed. I am almost the dead woman’s age times two. I can barely recall her song the scent of her hands though her wild hair scratches my dreams at night.   return to me, oh Lord of then and now, my mother’s calling, her young voice humming my name.

a love person from love people out of the afrikan sun under the sign of cancer. whoever see my midnight smile seeing star apple and mango from home. whoever take me for a negative thing, his death be on him like a skin and his skin be his heart’s revenge. * lucy one-eye she got her mama’s ways. big round roller can’t cook can’t clean if that’s what you want you got it world. lucy one-eye she see the world sideways. word foolish she say what she don’t want to say, she don’t say what she want to. lucy one-eye she won’t walk away from it. she’ll keep on trying with her crooked look and her wrinkled ways, the darling girl. * if mama could see she would see lucy sprawling limbs of lucy decorating the backs of chairs lucy hair holding the mirrors up that reflect odd aspects of lucy. if mama could hear she would hear lucysong rolled in the corners like lint exotic webs of lucysighs long lucy spiders explaining to obscure gods. if mama could talk she would talk good girl good girl good girl clean up your room. * i was born in a hotel, a maskmaker. my bones were knit by a perilous knife. my skin turned around at midnight and i entered the earth in a woman jar. i learned the world all wormside up and this is my yes my strong fingers; i was born in a bed of good lessons and it has made me wise. * light on my mother’s tongue breaks through her soft extravagant hip into life. lucille she calls the light, which was the name of the grandmother who waited by the crossroads in virginia and shot the whiteman off his horse, killing the killer of sons. light breaks from her life to her lives… mine already is an afrikan name. *