Greetings everyone. I am very sorry for this very late edition of the Friday Night Poetry Corner. A great friend of mines got on my case today by such a postponement so I will showcase two poems tonight.

Yes I know it’s a Sunday like Miles Davis–“So What.” lol.

The features poets for tonight in further honoring of Black History Month is Lucille Clifton and June Jordan. The magnificent poets, their brilliance makes the pen to paper as greater as apple pie to ice cream. Or donuts to coffee, whiskey to cigars—

Just great combos for ones’ pleasure in wants and mental needs..

Let me stop writing, enjoy and look up more of their works, you won’t be disappointed. I promise that.

The great Lucille Clifton, photo by Gwen Phillips

1994

By Lucille Clifton

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year

when a thumb of ice

stamped itself hard near my heart

you have your own story

you know about the fears the tears

the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies

are the ones we tell ourselves

you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breasts

you know how dangerous it is

to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year

when i woke into the winter

of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off

the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children

did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this

from your own shivering life

The brilliant June Jordan, photo by Gwen Phillips

A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters

By June Jordan

A few years back and they told me Black

means a hole where other folks

got brain/it was like the cells in the heads

of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps

Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious

Jensen Lapse, remember?

Anyway I was thinking

about how to devise

a test for the wise

like a Stanford-Binet

for the C.I.A.

you know?

Take Einstein

being the most the unquestionable the outstanding

the maximal mind of the century

right?

And I’m struggling against this lapse leftover

from my Black childhood to fathom why

anybody should say so:

E=mc squared?

I try that on this old lady live on my block:

She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop

and mad as can be because some absolute

jackass have left a kingsize mattress where

she have to sweep around it stains and all she

don’t want to know nothing about in the first place

“Mrs. Johnson!” I say, leaning on the gate

between us: “What you think about somebody come up

with an E equals M C 2?”

“How you doin,” she answer me, sideways, like she don’t

want to let on she know I ain’

combed my hair yet and here it is

Sunday morning but still I have the nerve

to be bothering serious work with these crazy

questions about

“E equals what you say again, dear?”

Then I tell her, “Well

also this same guy? I think

he was undisputed Father of the Atom Bomb!”

“That right.” She mumbles or grumbles, not too politely

“And dint remember to wear socks when he put on

his shoes!” I add on (getting desperate)

at which point Mrs. Johnson take herself and her broom

a very big step down the stoop away from me

“And never did nothing for nobody in particular

lessen it was a committee

and

used to say, ‘What time is it?’

and

you’d say, ‘Six o’clock.’

and

he’d say, ‘Day or night?’

and

and he never made nobody a cup a tea

in his whole brilliant life!

and

[my voice rises slightly]

and

he dint never boogie neither: never!”

“Well,” say Mrs. Johnson, “Well, honey,

I do guess

that’s genius for you.”

June Jordan, “A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust. Used by permission of The June M. Jordan Literary Trust, www.junejordan.com.