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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936....
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FURTHER READING
Poems for Times of Turmoil
blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton
Chaplinesque
by Hart Crane
Fifteen Years of Darkness
by Liu Xiaobo
In a Country
by Larry Levis
O Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
O Me! O Life!
by Walt Whitman
Poet's Work
by Lorine Niedecker
Recession
by Sydney Lea
The Second Coming
by W. B. Yeats
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thing
by Rae Armantrout
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4/30/92 for rodney king

 
by Lucille Clifton

so
the body
of one black man
is rag and stone
is mud
and blood
the body of one
black man
contains no life
worth loving
so the body
of one black man
is nobody
mama
mama
mamacita
is there no value
in this skin
mama
mama
if we are nothing
why
should we spare
the neighborhood
mama
mama
who will be next and
why should we save
the pictures






Lucille Clifton, "4/30/92 for rodney king" 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.
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