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hey music and me only white, hair a flutter of fall leaves circling my perfect line of a nose, no lips, no behind, hey white me and i'm wearing white history but there’s no future in those clothes so i take them off and wake up dancing.
From Next: New Poems by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1989 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with permission of BOA Editions Ltd.. All rights reserved.
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
poets in their bassinets
dream a splendid woman holding over their baby eyes
a globe, shining with
possibility. someone,
she smiles, has to see this
and report it, and they
in their innocence
believing that all will be
as beautiful as she is,
in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely time
of honest women stepping