and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
■
i went to the valley
but i didn’t go to stay
i stand on my father’s ground
not breaking.
it holds me up
like a hand my father pushes.
virginia.
i am in virginia,
the magic word
rocked in my father’s box
like heaven,
the magic line in my hand. but
where is the afrika in this?
except, the grass is green,
is greener he would say.
and the sky opens a better blue
and in the historical museum
where the slaves
are still hidden away like knives
i find a paper with a name i know.
his name.
their name.
sayles.
the name he loved.
i stand on my father’s ground
not breaking.
there is an afrikan in this
and whose ever name it has been,
the blood is mine.
my soul got happy
and i stayed all day.
■
at last we killed the roaches.
mama and me. she sprayed,
i swept the ceiling and they fell
dying onto our shoulders, in our hair
covering us with red. the tribe was broken,
the cooking pots were ours again
and we were glad, such cleanliness was grace
when i was twelve. only for a few nights,
and then not much, my dreams were blood
my hands were blades and it was murder murder
all over the place.
■
in the evenings
i go through my rooms
like a witch watchman
mad as my mother was for
rattling knobs and
tapping glass. ah, lady,
i can see you now,
our personal nurse,
placing the iron
wrapped in rags
near our cold toes.
you are thawed places and
safe walls to me as i walk
the same sentry,
ironing the winters warm and
shaking locks in the night
like a ghost.
■
breaklight
light keeps on breaking.
i keep knowing
the language of other nations.
i keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and i keep knowing what they mean.
and light just keeps on breaking.
last night
the fears of my mother came
knocking and when i
opened the door
they tried to explain themselves
and i understood
everything they said.
■
some dreams hang in the air
like smoke. some dreams
get all in your clothes and
be wearing them more than you do and
you be half the time trying to
hold them and half the time
trying to wave them away.
their smell be all over you and
they get to your eyes and
you cry. the fire be gone
and the wood but some dreams
hang in the air like smoke
touching everything.
■
the thirty eighth year
of my life,
plain as bread
round as a cake
an ordinary woman.
an ordinary woman.
i had expected to be
smaller than this,
more beautiful,
wiser in afrikan ways,
more confident,
i had expected
more than this.
i will be forty soon.
my mother once was forty.
my mother died at forty four,
a woman of sad countenance
leaving behind a girl
awkward as a stork.
my mother was thick,
her hair was a jungle and
she was very wise
and beautiful
and sad.
i have dreamed dreams
for you mama
more than once.
i have wrapped me
in your skin
and made you live again
more than once.
i have taken the bones you hardened
and built daughters
and they blossom and promise fruit
like afrikan trees.
i am a woman now.
an ordinary woman.
in the thirty eighth
year of my life,
surrounded by life,
a perfect picture of
blackness blessed,
i had not expected this
loneliness.
if it is western,
if it is the final
europe in my mind,
if in the middle of my life
i am turning the final turn
into the shining dark
let me come to it whole
and holy
not afraid
not lonely
out of my mother’s life
into my own.
into my own.
i had expected more than this.
i had not expected to be
an ordinary woman.
■
Anniversary
5/10/74
sixteen years
by the white of my hair
by my wide bones
by the life that ran out of me
into life,
sixteen years
and the girl is gone
with her two good eyes;
she was always hoping something,
she was afraid of everything.
little is left of her who hid
behind bread and babies
only something thin and
bright as a flame,
it has no language it can speak
without burning
it has no other house to run to
it loves you loves you loves you.
■
November 1, 1975
My mother is white bones
in a weed field
on her birthday.
She who would be sixty
has been sixteen years
absent at celebrations.
For sixteen years of minutes
she has been what is missing.
This is just to note
the arrogance of days
continuing to happen
as if she were here.
■
“We Do Not Know Very Much About Lucille’s Inner Life”
from the light of her inner life
a company of citizens
watches lucille as she trembles
through the world.
she is a tired woman though
well meaning, they say.
when will she learn to listen to us?
lucille things are not what they seem.
all all is wonder and
astonishment.
■
lucy and her girls
lucy is the ocean
extended by
her girls
are the river
fed by
lucy
is the sun
reflected through
her girls
are the moon
lighted by
lucy
is the history of
her girls
are the place where
lucy
&n
bsp; was going
■
i was born with twelve fingers
like my mother and my daughter.
each of us
born wearing strange black gloves
extra baby fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs and
dipping into the milk.
somebody was afraid we would learn to cast spells
and our wonders were cut off
but they didn’t understand
the powerful memories of ghosts. now
we take what we want
with invisible fingers
and we connect
my dead mother my live daughter and me
through our terrible shadowy hands.
■
what the mirror said
listen,
you a wonder.
you a city
of a woman.
you got a geography
of your own.
listen,
somebody need a map
to understand you.
somebody need directions
to move around you.
listen,
woman,
you not a noplace
anonymous
girl;
mister with his hands on you
he got his hands on
some
damn
body!
■
there is a girl inside.
she is randy as a wolf.
she will not walk away
and leave these bones
to an old woman.
she is a green tree
in a forest of kindling.
she is a green girl
in a used poet.
she has waited
patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom
and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.
■
to merle
say skinny manysided tall on the ball
brown downtown woman
last time i saw you was on the corner of
pyramid and sphinx.
ten thousand years have interrupted our conversation
but I have kept most of my words
till you came back.
what i’m trying to say is
i recognize your language and
let me call you sister, sister,
i been waiting for you.
■
august the 12th
for sam
we are two scars on a dead woman’s belly
brother, cut from the same knife
you and me. today is your birthday.
where are you? my hair
is crying for her brother.
myself with a mustache
empties the mirror on our mother’s table
and all the phones in august wait.
today is your birthday, call us.
tell us where you are,
tell us why you are silent now.
■
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.
■
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.
■
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.
■
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.
■
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
&n
bsp; 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.
■
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.
■
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
How to Carry Water Page 4