Poems about Hips

Homage to My Hips
-Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

--Response--

Homage to My Hips: A Burnt Offering

My mother hates her
mother's hips, through which she came
to be-- rudely formed
those hips. And cumbersome.

The Old Masters admired
plumpness-- full hipped
and smooth shouldered.
They waxed rhapsodic in oils.

And Lucille said, Power!
These hips occupy space.

But my mother abides
the kitchen cross-stitch
that claims audaciously:
pleasure is fleeting,
hips eternal.

In ecstatic moments I grow--
an enormous moon--
and know no fear.

But in harsher light
I wish to be a tight
strung bow, stripped
of every blessing, formidable
as a burnt offering.