Sunday, February 14, 2010

RIP Lucille Clifton

Rest in Peace, Lucille Clifton, award-winning African American poet who died yesterday at age 76.

Here she is reading two poems at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2008:


And...
Homage to My Hips, by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

1 comment:

lolly said...

I like this one, too:

"The Times"

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
in pity.
another child has killed a child
and i catch myself relieved that they are
white and i might understand except
that i am tired of understanding.
if these
alphabets could speak their own tongue
it would be all symbol surely;
the cat would hunch across the long table
and that would mean time is catching up,
and the spindle fish would run to ground
and that would mean the end is coming
and the grains of dust would gather themselves
along the streets and spell out

these too are your children this too is your child