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
...

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
...

for mama

remember this.
she is standing by
...

fox

who
can blame her for hunkering
...

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

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

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,
...

it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
...