When I went in search of poems from Lucille Clifton for today’s National Poetry Month post, I had the worst time trying to pick just one. Clifton, born in DePew, NY, in 1936, was prolific, both as a poet and an author of children’s literature. Her focus was on the African American experience, but so many of her poems resonate with me because they’re about women’s experience. Viz:
“poem in praise of menstruation"
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
Clifton was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 to 1985. She died
in Baltimore in 2010. Her poem “slaveships” makes me think of Phillis
Wheatley, as well as the way Christianity was used to keep slaves and their
descendants in their (inferior) place.
“slaveships”
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
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