By Lucille Clifton
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
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Clifton, former Poet Laureate of Maryland, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer finalist, died on Saturday in Baltimore.
It was a pretty wild and crazy romantic Valentine's Day around here...not. Daniel had gone off early to robotics, the rest of us took our time getting ready to go out, we were heading out to the car when we received a text message from Daniel saying that the school building was closing early and could we please come get him. We'd planned to stop at Trader Joe's and at Gamestop in Rockville so Adam could download a Pikachu-colored Pichu for his Pokemon Platinum game; instead we went to the Trader Joe's and Gamestop in Silver Spring. Then we had to stop at CVS before coming home to watch some Olympics.
We had dinner with my parents, who had picked up pizza at Costco (though I had a tuna bagel, which is much more my thing anyway in terms of sodium and taste both). They also had a very rich chocolate cake, though I was good and only had a bite...plus some Dove milk chocolate, since plain old chocolate is my favorite, anyway. I had only bought little boxes of candy for my family during the week that everyone was home; Paul got me The Knave of Hearts illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, which I had seen and coveted at the Delaware Museum of Art. So it was a nice Valentine's Day if a relatively uneventful one! Here are a few more photos in honor of the weekend's other big festival, the Lunar New Year. Happy Presidents' Day!
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