Lucille Clifton Poems

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
...

my daddy has paid the rent
and the insurance man is gone
and the lights is back on
and my uncle brud has hit
...

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
...

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
...

whatever slid into my mother's room that
late june night, tapping her great belly,
summoned me out roundheaded and unsmiling.
is this the moon, my father used to grin.
...

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
...

it lay in my palm soft and trembled
as a new bird and i thought about
authority and how it always insisted
on itself, how it was master
...

she
stolen from my bone
is it any wonder
i hunger to tunnel back
...

boys
i don't promise you nothing
but this
what you pawn
...

what does this mean.
to see walking men
wrapped in the color of death,
to hear from their tongue
...