I WHISPER INTO HIS MOUTH OUR NAMES
Spending the morning with the great American poet, Lucille Clifton and her deeply radical poems. I love this retelling of the Adam and Eve story – Adam, slow and unformed and Eve, who names creation, awaits her ‘clay two-foot’ to awaken fully into the world. Wonderful! Love Susie. x
adam thinking
she
stolen from my bone
is it any wonder
i hunger to tunnel back
inside desperate
to reconnect the rib and clay
and to be whole again
some need is in me
struggling to roar through my
mouth into a name
this creation is so fierce
i would rather have been born
eve thinking
it is wild country here
brothers and sisters coupling
claw and wing
groping one another
i wait
while the clay two-foot
rumbles in his chest
searching for language to
call me
but he is slow
tonight as he sleeps
i will whisper into his mouth
our names
by Lucille Clifton