FemmeNoir
A Web Portal For Lesbians Of Color

Michelle T. Clinton
Author/Poet

Right there in the bisexual deep fry, where language meets music for a quick cocktail before hightailing it over the border to some Utopic greensward or other (useta be a city!), this is the habitat of one MICHELLE CLINTON, the fierce sister from LA, now Berkeley, who lets you off the hook only when you say "I do" and go ahead and marry her poetry. Voted "One of the Best" performing poets by High Performance Magazine, she is the author of three books.—The United States of Poetry  http://www.worldofpoetry.org/usop/)

Spoken word artist Michelle T. Clinton describes her work as "an attempt to assimilate the racist & sexist violence in my body. The poems struggle to answer the question: How does the individual/community survive and continue to function in the face of systematic atrocity?"

Listen to Clinton perform her poems "History As Trash" and "Manifesting the Girl Hero," taken from her spoken word CD "Blood As A Bright Color" (New Alliance).

 At what point in your life did you realize you were an adult?  That is a dumb question. Time and growth and space and maturation continually blur. I am a child when I laugh my greedy laugh, when I dream my bright or scary dreams. I am an adult when I drink decaffeinated espresso. I became an adult when merry-go-rounds got boring, and now I must seek better toys. I am a child when the tub is full of bubbles, when I sing. I am an adult when I express erotic love, when I face the death of my loved ones from violence or disease. I am old and young whenever I pray. I intend to die an old, childish woman. -- Michelle T. Clinton

Solitude Ain't Loneliness

Say for instance you're a girl/ but citified/ a hard sister
like to keep her eyes open when she f---s/ & carries weapons
for the urban night creatures on the prowl/ Say you ain't
got no Freudian thing/ but you packing none the less:
your mucous is acid
your anger on a leash
& can't no wish from the mouth of a warm eyed lover
make you blink

Before the girl mist can enter you/ before you ever cop
a feminine buss/ & blow the urban rust out your uterus
you got to clear house
you got to clean out
all the greasy fuzz/ left behind by the rat pack lot
of ex lovers

You got to celibate/ in silence
& wait & wait for a red blush to rise up
a sparkling rush as radical as your first blood
as muscular as your momma's hands in soapy water
cold as the shock of the first breath
the earth blew into your lungs

The black sky wants your ass purified
& clear enough to release this city's fear
free enough to close your eyes
go inside & hear her.

— Michélle T. Clinton

Source: http://www.worldofpoetry.org/usop/word8.htm
http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/clinton/
http://www.worldofpoetry.org/usop/

Review of Good Sense & The Faithless
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/foster/charred.htm

Blood As A Bright Color

Solitude Ain't Loneliness

Good Sense & The Faithless