52 Poems: Weeks 33 and 34 Lucille Clifton

God, I love Lucille Clifton. Her lines are short and her poems are brief, but the references she makes to the strength of women raise me up. She makes me want to live, remember, and write better.  I needed a lift this week and Ms. Clifton provided that. Hopefully she will lift you up as well...

harriet
By Lucille Clifton

if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
pointed
to be the madwoman
at the rivers edge
warning
be free or die
and isabell
if i be you
let me in my
sojourning
not forget
to ask my brothers
ain't i a woman too
and
grandmother
if i be you
let me not forget to
work hard
trust the Gods
love my children and
wait.

Memory 

By Lucille Clifton

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,
though she tells it better than i do,
not because of her charm
but because it never happened
she says,
no bully salesman swaggering,
no rage, no shame, none of it
ever happened.
i only remember buying you
your first grown up shoes
she smiles. ask me
how it feels.

52 Poems: Week 26: Lucille Clifton

June 27 was Lucille Clifton's birthday so here is a poem to remind us of her and the strength of women we know and don't know.

the lost women
by lucille clifton 

i need to know their names

those women i would have walked with

jauntily the way men go in groups

swinging their arms, and the ones

those sweating women whom i would have joined

after a hard game to chew the fat

what would we have called each other laughing

joking into our beer? where are my gangs,

my teams, my mislaid sisters?

all the women who could have known me,

where in the world are their names?

i need to know their names those women i would have walked with jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom i would have joined after a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21309#sthash.ILSfLv9p.dpuf

i need to know their names those women i would have walked with jauntily the way men go in groups swinging their arms, and the ones those sweating women whom i would have joined after a hard game to chew the fat what would we have called each other laughing joking into our beer? where are my gangs, my teams, my mislaid sisters? all the women who could have known me, where in the world are their names? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21309#sthash.ILSfLv9p.dpuf