Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936....
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems about Gender
Blur
by Andrew Hudgins
Children in a Field
by Angela Shaw
Fast Speaking Woman [excerpt]
by Anne Waldman
I, Being born a Woman and Distressed (Sonnet XLI)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ontario
by Mark Levine
poem in praise of menstruation
by Lucille Clifton
Sci-Fi
by Tracy K. Smith
Stones
by Michael Blumenthal
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

poem to my uterus

 
by Lucille Clifton

you     uterus
you have been patient
as a sock
while i have slippered into you
my dead and living children
now
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me






Lucille Clifton, "poem to my uterus" from Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1991 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., boaeditions.org.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.