telling the truth about children's lives is radical.

these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they want to do. these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips

I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.

In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing.

I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.

wishes for sons by Lucille Clifton i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.

they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine