I picked up the Times today to see that noted African American poet Lucille Clifton died. Ms. Clifton came to my attention through the work of another gifted poet and performer, Sekou Sundiata, who passed in 2007. Sekou created one of his most moving works using the title of one of Clifton’s celebrated poems blessing the boats. Sekou’s blessing the boats was a powerful solo performance that related his experience with the life-threatening illness of kidney failure and recovery through organ transplant. The final words of the one-man show were Clifton’s poem. It was a beautiful and poignant work that we had the honor of supporting and presenting in 2002.
On March 3rd, we will present a screening of finding the 51st (dream) state: Sekou Sundiata’s America Project followed by a discussion between Michaela Angela Davis, expert critic and writer on urban style, race, gender and hip-hop culture and Carl Hancock Rux, award winning poet, playwright , novelist, essayist and recording artist.
Read the New York Times article about Lucille Clifton.
Yes this was a sudden loss. But those of us who appreciated her work will really miss her. I had the opportuninty to hear her read a the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washingto, D.C. She was dedicating htis reading to her friend Denis Levertov. So when I heard she transitioned to the ranks of Saints and Ancestors I wrote this poem.
Quilt
(for Lucille Clifton)
when I think about how words attach
I think about grandma’s holy
ghost blue kitchen yellow collard
green pieces of her quilt
I held onto year after year
although it was tattered
it never failed it never
fell apart so when I am
cold or lonely I can quilt myself
within memory
please fix me a plate
and mix it with corn bread
using my fingers as forks
then I will lick them
then I will go back to the
church on twelfth street
where I could hear old
women in white hats mourning
two streets away I will stop
pay my respects at the cemetery
at Walnut Grove Plantation
in South Carolina its not what you’ve
said or written it is how you’ve
lived no matter what they did
or denied you the laurel we know
we took notes we remembered
the days you sat on a porch
with other women and gossiped
out of care out of protection
we know how you raised
black boys through prayer
through supplication through
suffering giving all you had to
make them free and now that
you are here with me write now
I hear your voice on the phone
the breathing calm that no matter
how far away and where I am
in this life I will be alright you lived
this life through your words.
A. Robert Gibbons is a writer living in New York City.
The Conflagration of St. Vincent’s
A larger fear gripped us as I saw the sign of protestors littered on the storefronts of newspapers, heard the radio waves bullet through the air and to witness the slow decay of those revolving doors. This mission, a place where the sick and the distressed among us had a refuge. Where the voiceless and unable could be served. It had been more than a year when I wrote a poem about my first visit. The holy Mary even offered my phobia the sign of peace. But the empty emergency room, where attendants bordered in Mother Theresa blue snapped pictures for posterity, where the silence, the whispers elevated to the heavens like incense. “When is your last day?” Here I was again as an au-pair to a friend that just needed some test. But my inspiration came from that moment. It was if I had come to the wake of a saint-the final rite. As my emotion burned in me, I had looked for inspiration the entire day, but we can’t question faith. I hope that I could revise my emotion above the morgue feeling. Then my friend disappeared behind those empty doors. Those tears trailed not for himself but for many that has crossed its doors. I felt the burning as I turned to leave. The super doves that met me on the outside as if they were waiting to be fed tried to bring me resolution, but it just was not enough to know that St. Vincent’s was gone.
A. Robert Gibbons is a writer living in New York City. He can be reached at robertgibbons54@gmail.com
We lost a two civil rights legend last weekand this week and I want to pay tribute to Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Heights:
The Hook
(for Benjamin Hooks)
my grandmother would take us across
the Georgia line the same time each summer
as if we were migrant workers traveling
those back roads of Okeechobee to Tallahassee
chicken coops and fruit stands
the elements would change from tropical to
deciduous muck to clay
corn trucks tobacco cotton
winding through the black bottom
she would batter those pork chops
dressing them in flour smothering
prayer cloth placing in rectangular pans
covering in aluminun foil the toil
was the gravy packing us into a beige buick
fried Florida sun through it
she knew she did not tell
she cleared her mind of doubt held
that sterring wheel shifting to the right
making it before dark
my legacy was family
my civil rights legacy.
A. Robert Gibbons is a poet living in New York City. He can be reached at robertgibbons54@gmail.com
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