Poem: "My Mother's Hips"

My Mother’s Hips

these hips are big hips

     Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips”


They have a bicycle in them,
my mother’s hips. They move.
They have a washtub in them.
They do. Smell of soap suds.
They have a gas station too.
They don’t have a university
in them, they don’t, no, sir,
they don’t have a battlefield,
but they have training grounds
in Australia, they have India,
and the greatest city on earth,
New York, New York, where
I praise my mother’s hips.