the times they used to be
Mama, Mama.
Tell us about when you was a girl . . .
tell us one of them stories
about the olden days.
So begins this tender story, set in 1948, when Satchel Paige was in the majors, Ralph Bunche was at the U.N., and each evening Sooky and her family turned on the radio to listen to Amos ’n’ Andy. Uncle Sunny, a veteran of the 92nd Division in World War II–it was his time, too. But mostly it was Sooky’s time, as she sat on the curb with her best friend Tallahassie May Scott in the dusky summer nights, waiting for the street lights to go on. That summer Sooky was 12 years old and got her first pair of wedgies, and sin broke all out in her best friend’s body because she wasn’t saved.
Excerpts
"water sign woman"
the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word.
“in white america”
i come to read them poems,
a fancy trick i do
like juggling with balls of light.
i stand, a dark spinner,
in the grange hall,
in the library, in the
smaller conference room
“telling our stories”
the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.
​
at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.
Lucille Clifton’s writing some of the best there is. True to life. Simple but profound. One of my ultra favorite authors.