My Sassy Lucille: A Poem for Lucille Clifton

"Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept."
--Lucille Clifton
"People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated."
--Lucille Clifton

Poet Lucille Clifton is the winner of the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets. In the year 2000, she won the National Book Award for her poetry book, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. Two of her poetry collections (Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980, and Next: New Poems), were chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She was elected Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999. She served as poet laureate of Maryland from 1974 to 1985. She continues to write great poetry today.
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My Sassy Lucille*
by Mac Walton, aka, MacDaddy
--for poet Lucille Clifton

Lucille,
They say you won’t do your sister will.
I say you just sassy, a might brassy and
I likes my black coffee just the way it is.

I likes yo thick, moist lips,
that wide butt, them fine swinging hips.

2

Lucille,
They say you won’t do your sister’s will.
I say I likes yo ear fine-tuned, yo eyes deep-set,
Them eyes that see past me, me and my white shirt
Pillin, me and my top button Missing, me and my
Ring-around-the-collar getting darker and darker, me and
My dreams of you, me and my sweet dreams of you and me,
Brothers and sisters united again, listening and hearing again,
The way it once was, the way it always outta be—free.

3

Lucille,
They say you won’t do your sister’s will.
I say keep juicing them thick, red lips and
Rocking that big butt, swinging them wide hips.

Keep hearing my loud laughter over BB's "Rock me, baby," over
Barbecue steaming from mama’s crowded kitchen.
Keep feeling my hunger cry out from busy subways, lonely
Park benches and half-frozen, dirty ditches cuz

4

Lucille,
They say you won’t do your sister’s will.
I say you just sassy, a might brassy, and
I likes my black coffee just the way it is.
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* from book soon to be published
The Sixties: Yes, I Remember
by Mac Walton