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Poems used in the song cycle No Ordinary Woman! (1997)
Poetry by Lucille Clifton from the collection Good Woman
Music by Gwyneth Walker
Bones, Be Good!
i beg my bones to be good but they keep clicking music and i spin in the center of myself a foolish frightful woman moving my skin against the wind and tap dancing for my life.
Turning
turning into my own turning on in to my own self at last turning out of the white cage, turning out of the lady cage turning at last on a stem like a black fruit in my own season at last
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 to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!
Homage to My Hair
when I feel her jump up and dance i hear the music! my God i’m talking about my nappy hair! she is a challenge to your hand black man, she is as tasty on your tongue as good greens black man, she can touch your mind with her electric fingers and the grayer she do get, good God, the blacker she do be!
in the thirty eighth year of my life, surrounded by life, a perfect picture of blackness blessed, i had not expected this loneliness.
if it is western, if it is the final europe in my mind, if in the middle of my life i am turning the final turn into the shining dark let me come to it whole and holy not afraid not lonely out of mother’s life into my own. into my own.
i had expected more than this. i had not expected to be an ordinary woman.
