Lucille Clifton Poems

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
...

for mama

remember this.
she is standing by
...

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.
...

it is all blood and breaking,
blood and breaking, the thing
drops out of its box squalling
into the light. they are both squalling,
...

listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
...

fox

who
can blame her for hunkering
...

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
...

harriet
if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
...

you are the one
i am lit for.
Come with your rod
that twists
...

ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother's face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
...