the message of fred clifton
Clifton’s dead husband rises in light from the dead to deliver a message from the afterlife: memory is a mercy, while regret is a hell.
the lost baby poem
An elegy for the loss of a baby that never was. A woman forced by the circumstances of extreme poverty recalls her decision to abort the baby. In strikingly powerful imagery, she describes how the “almost body” is carried out to the sea as sewage.
Kent State
This poem takes a uniquely race-infused perspective toward the infamous confrontation between students protesting the Vietnam War and National Guard soldiers supposed called in to maintain the peace, but who wound up killing students. The speaker suggests that this paradox is a strain of white genetics with the expansive observation that white men have a history of killing even their own children.
Jackie Robinson
A poem of hope and inspiration in the form of a heroic image of the baseball player who broke the segregation of Major League Baseball. The imagery juxtaposes baseball with that of the way black men often move through American society with care to avoid unwarranted suspicion.
"oh, antic god"
A plea from the poet to God to return her to the past when her mother was younger. The plea is stimulated by the recognition that she is starting to lose the sensuous memories that once came back so clearly.
won’t you celebrate with me?
The speaker calls for the reader to celebrate with her the kind of life she has made for herself. As opposed to merely asking to join in celebration with the life she’s led. The difference is subtle, but distinguishable.
An expression of delight and empowerment in the form of hips. The hips of the speaker are large and powerful; they are not dainty and used to being contained. Her hips also engage the attraction of men the way that other women might with more devotedly erogenous areas. The poem is a celebration of a body part not often celebrated, but at the same time a celebration of freedom symbolized by a body part not often so symbolized.
my dream about being white
The speaker’s dream of being white includes the facial attributes of white women compared to black women. But she quickly sees the lack of a future in thinking that way and strips off the whiteness as a costume.
slaveships
In which the titular object of transmission of freedom into bondage into slavery is personified (deified?) into the belly of Jesus with the slaves themselves packed together like spoons. All crying out to Jesus with the question of why such an abomination of humanity could take place.
wishes for sons
The poet’s wishes for sons are a litany of those aspects of life that only face daughters. The poem is a call for an understanding on the part of boys of what it means to be a girl with the implicit assumption that this will make men who better understand women.
