off his stick like a miracle
who will he find to fish the waters
he had saved for you?
his name stood at attention
in seven letters,
now there are six
and it never again
can be pronounced the same.
speaking of loss
i began with everything;
parents, two extra fingers
a brother to ruin. i was
a rich girl with no money
in a red dress. how did i come
to sit in this house
wearing a name i never heard
until i was a woman? someone has stolen
my parents and hidden my brother.
my extra fingers are cut away.
i am left with plain hands and
nothing to give you but poems.
to thelma who worried because i couldn’t cook
because no man would taste you
you tried to feed yourself
kneading your body
with your own fists. the beaten thing
rose up like a dough
and burst in the oven of your hunger.
madam, i’m not your gifted girl,
i am a woman and
i know what to do.
poem on my fortieth birthday to my mother who died young
well i have almost come to the place where you fell
tripping over a wire at the forty-fourth lap
and i have decided to keep running,
head up, body attentive, fingers
aimed like darts at first prize, so
i might not even watch out for the thin thing
grabbing towards my ankles but
i’m trying for the long one mama,
running like hell and if i fall
i fall.
february 13, 1980
twenty-one years of my life you have been
the lost color in my eye. my secret blindness,
all my seeings turned gray with your going.
mother, i have worn your name like a shield.
it has torn but protected me all these years,
now even your absence comes of age.
i put on a dress called woman for this day
but i am not grown away from you
whatever i say.
forgiving my father
it is friday. we have come
to the paying of the bills.
all week you have stood in my dreams
like a ghost, asking for more time
but today is payday, payday old man;
my mother’s hand opens in her early grave
and i hold it out like a good daughter.
there is no more time for you. there will
never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher
old liar. i wish you were rich so i could take it all
and give the lady what she was due
but you were the son of a needy father,
the father of a needy son;
you gave her all you had
which was nothing. you have already given her
all you had.
you are the pocket that was going to open
and come up empty any friday.
you were each other’s bad bargain, not mine.
daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man
what am i doing here collecting?
you lie side by side in debtors’ boxes
and no accounting will open them up.
to the unborn and waiting children
i went into my mother as
some souls go into a church,
for the rest only. but there,
even there, from the belly of a
poor woman who could not save herself
i was pushed without my permission
into a tangle of birthdays.
listen, eavesdroppers, there is no such thing
as a bed without affliction;
the bodies all may open wide but
you enter at your own risk.
aunt agnes hatcher tells
1. about the war
after the war when rationing was over
was a plenty names. people
shuffled them like cards and drew
new ones out the deck. child,
letters and numbers went
running through whole families.
everybody’s cousin was
somebody else. just
consider yourself lucky if
you know who you are.
2. about my mama
your mama, her bottom turned into hamburger
during the war but it was fat meat and
nobody wanted any. she sang Jesus keep me and
beat her fists in fits. fell dead
in the hospital hall
two smiles next to the virgin mary.
glad to be gone.
hunger can kill you.
she’s how i know.
3. about my daddy
your daddy, he decided to spread the wealth
as they say, and made another daughter.
just before the war she came calling
looking like his natural blood.
your mama surprised us and opened her heart.
none of his other tricks worked that good.
4. about me
you
slavery time they would be calling you
worth your weight in diamonds the way you
slide out babies like payday from that
billion dollar behind.
the once and future dead
who learn they will be white men
weep for their history. we call it
rain.
two-headed woman
in this garden
growing
following strict orders
following the Light
see the sensational
two-headed woman
one face turned outward
one face
swiveling slowly in
the making of poems
the reason why i do it
though i fail and fail
in the giving of true names
is i am adam and his mother
and these failures are my job.
new year
lucy
by sam
out of thelma
limps down a ramp
toward the rest of her life.
with too many candles
in her hair
she is a princess of
burning buildings
leaving the year that
tried to consume her.
her hands are bright
as they witch for water
and even her tears cry
fire fire
but she opens herself
to the risk of flame and
walks toward an ocean
of days.
sonora desert poem
for lois and richard shelton
1.
the ones who live in the desert,
if you knew them
you would understand everything.
they see it all and
never judge any
just drink the water when
they get the chance.
if i could grow arms on my scars
like them,
if i could learn
the patience they know
i wouldn’t apologize for my thorns either
just stand in the desert
and witness.
2. directions for watching the sun set in the desert
come to the landscape that was hidden under the sea.
look in the opposite direction.
reach for the mountain.
the mountain will ignore your hand.
the sun will fall on your back.
the landscape will fade away.
you will think you’re alone until a flash
of green
incredible light.
3. directions for leaving the desert
push the bones back
under your skin.
finish the water.
they will notice your thorns and
ask you to testify.
turn toward the shade.
smile.
say nothing at all.
my friends
no they will not understand
when i throw off my legs and my arms
at your hesitant yes.
when i throw them off and slide
like a marvelous snake toward your bed
your box whatever you will keep me in
no they will not understand what can be
so valuable beyond paper dollars diamonds
what is to me worth all appendages.
they will never understand never approve
of me loving at last where i would
throw it all off to be,
with you in your small room limbless
but whole.
wife
we are some of us
born for the water.
we begin at once
swimming toward him.
we sight him.
we circle him like a ring.
if he does not drown us we stay.
if he does
we swim like a fish for his brother.
i once knew a man
i once knew a man who had wild horses killed.
when he told about it
the words came galloping out of his mouth
and shook themselves and headed off in
every damn direction. his tongue
was wild and wide and spinning when he talked
and the people he looked at closed their eyes
and tore the skins off their backs as they walked away
and stopped eating meat.
there was no holding him once he got started;
he had had wild horses killed one time and
they rode him to his grave.
angels
“the angels say they have no wings”
two shining women.
i will not betray you with
public naming
nor celebrate actual birthdays.
you are my two good secrets
lady dark lady fair.
no one will know that I recognize
the rustle of sky in your voices
and your meticulous absence
of wing.
conversation with my grandson, waiting to be conceived
you will bloom
in a family of flowers.
you are the promise
the Light made to adam,
the love you will grow in
is the garden of our lord.
“and i will be a daisy.
daddy too.
mommy is a dandelion. grandma
you are a flower
that has no name.”
the mystery that surely is present
as the underside of a leaf
turning to stare at you quietly
from your hand,
that is the mystery you have not
looked for, and it turns
with a silent shattering of your life
for who knows ever after
the proper position of things
or what is waiting to turn from us
even now?
the astrologer predicts at mary’s birth
this one lie down on grass.
this one old men will follow
calling mother mother.
she womb will blossom then die.
this one she hide from evening.
at a certain time when she hear something
it will burn her ear.
at a certain place when she see something
it will break her eye.
anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter
we rise up early and
we work. work is the medicine
for dreams.
that dream
i am having again;
she washed in light,
whole world bowed to its knees,
she on a hill looking up,
face all long tears.
and shall i give her up
to dreaming then? i fight this thing.
all day we scrubbing scrubbing.
mary’s dream
winged women was saying
“full of grace” and like.
was light beyond sun and words
of a name and a blessing.
winged women to only i.
i joined them, whispering
yes.
how he is coming then
like a pot turned on the straw
nuzzled by cows and an old man
dressed like a father. like a loaf
a poor baker sets in the haystack to cool.
his mother whisper my son my son.
holy night
joseph, i afraid of stars,
their brilliant seeing.
so many eyes. such light.
joseph, i cannot still these limbs,
i hands keep moving toward i breasts,
so many stars. so bright.
joseph, is wind burning from east
joseph, i shine, oh joseph, oh
illuminated night.
a song of mary
somewhere it being yesterday.
i a maiden in my mother’s house.
the animals silent outside.
is morning.
princes sitting on thrones in the east
studying the incomprehensible heavens.
joseph carving a table somewhere
in another place.
i watching my mother.
i smiling an ordinary smile.
island mary
after the all been done and i
one old creature carried on
another creature’s back, i wonder
could i have fought these thing?
surrounded by no son of mine save
old men calling mother like in the tale
the astrologer tell, i wonder
could i have walk away when voices
singing in my sleep? i one old woman.
always i seem to worrying now for
another young girl asleep
in the plain evening.
what song around her ear?
what star still choosing?
mary mary astonished by God
on a straw bed circled by beasts
and an old husband. mary marinka
holy woman split by sanctified seed
into mother and mother for ever and ever
we pray for you sister woman shook by the
awe full affection of the saints.
for the blind
you will enter morning
without error.
you will stand in a room
where you have never lingered.
you will touch glass.
someone will face you with bones
repeating your bones.
you will feel them in the glass.
your fingers will shine
with recognition,
your eyes will open
with delight.
for the mad
you will be alone at last
in the sanity of your friends.
brilliance will fade away from you
and you will settle in dimmed light.
you will not remember how to mourn
your dying difference.
you will not be better but
they will say you are well.
for the lame
happen you will rise,
lift from grounded in a spin
and begin to forget the geography
of fixed things.
happen you will walk past
where you meant to stay,
happen
you will wonder at the way
it seemed so marvelous to move.
for the mute
they will blow from your mouth one morning
like from a shook bottle
and you will try to keep them for
tomorrow’s conversation but
your patience will be broken when the
bottle bursts
and you will spill all of your
extraordinary hearings for there are
too many languages for
one mortal tongue.
God waits for the wandering world.
he expects us when we enter,
late or soon.
he will not mind my coming after hours.
his patience is his promise.
the light that came to lucille clifton
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. it was the summer
she understood that she had not understood
and was not mistress even
of her own off eye. then
the man escaped throwing away his tie and
the children grew legs and started walking and