So it goes

With the recent passing of Lucille Clifton, Presidents Day seems the perfect time to consider all the wondrous non-presidents who seem to be launching into space portals like ravens and butterflies: Mary Daly, Marilyn French, Michael Jackson, George Tiller, Eugene Glick, Susan Hill, Jim Carroll, John Updike, J. D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, Alexander McQueen...

Death is becoming a quarterly newsletter. Perhaps this is what it's like to approach 30.

One can only hope their artistry and energy are pollinating here on earth like snow flakes over Mid-Atlantic America, like biodegradable paper, that *we are the ones we've been waiting for.* They are ballroom and break dancing somewhere really neat.

For me, Lucille Clifton was an awesome epiphany in my little writer's life. Her words are easy, elegant, edgy, and evocative. Essential and necessary.

So, her poetry:

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

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 have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top

won't you celebrate with me

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,

my one hand holding tight

my one hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

There is a girl inside

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 greeen 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.

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past

as if i made it,

as if i sculpted it

with my own hands. i did not.

this past was waiting for me

when i came,

a monstrous unnamed baby,

and i with my mother's itch

took it to breast

and named it

History.

she is more human now,

learning languages everyday,

remembering faces, names and dates.

when she is strong enough to travel

on her own, beware, she will.

Recently read: PUSH by Sapphire

Currently reading: White Teeth by Zadie Smith