i remember (or at least i think i do) awhile back when lauren posted some lucille clifton poems (but i could have been hallucinating. anyway, i thought these somehow apropos to all of the nomination business, so here you go:

poem to my uterus

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 black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me

to my last period

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.
now it is done
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn't she
beautiful? wasn't she beautiful?