Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is co-author, with Elizabeth Alexander of the chapbook collaboration, Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. Her work has appeared in journals such as African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Shenandoah, and in the anthologies Bum Rush the Page, Role Call, Common Wealth, Gathering Ground, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. She is currently at work on a third collection of poems, The Coal Tar Colors. She teaches in the creative writing program at Cornell University.

Purchase her books, Open Interval, Black Swan, and her collaborative chapbook, Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, written with Elizabeth Alexander.

Bop: The North Star
—Auburn, NY

Polaris sits still in the sky and if I knew
which one it was I could follow it all the way
to Auburn. Oh, Harriet, who did not need the poise
of freedom knocked into your head like sense, who found it more
than possible to sleep, pistol shoved deep into your pocket
along this route, I cannot tell a dipper from Orion.

Yes, the springtime needed you. Many a star was waiting
for your eyes only.

The university twinkles on the hill above my house.
The fat moon rises and a girl holds out her arms. She twirls
in a blue Polly Flinders dress. Mama’s precious
cameo— a white woman’s silhouette on black satin ribbon
choker tied around her neck. Poise begins here:
in cinders, in rhyme, in splintering beauty into this
and this—: the image at my throat: the summer’s pitching
constellations: the ten o’clock scholar’s midnight lesson.

Yes, the springtime needed you. Many a star was waiting
for your eyes only.

At the prison at Auburn I cross the yard. Inmates whet tongues against
my body: cement—sculpted—: poised for hate—: pitch
compliments like coins: —(wade)— their silver slickening —(in the water)—:
uncollected change. A guard asks Think they’re beautiful? just wait
til they’re out here stabbing each other. Oh, Harriet, the stars
throw down shanks—: teach the sonnet’s a cell—: now try to escape—

Yes, the springtime needed you. Many a star was waiting
for your eyes only.

The actors mill about the party saying rhubarb
because other words do not sound like conversation.
In the kitchen, always, one who’s just discovered
beauty, his mouth full of whiskey and strawberries.
He practices the texture of her hair with his tongue;
in her, five billion electrons pop their atoms. Rhubarb
in electromagnetic loops, rhubarb, rhubarb, the din increases.

I too have turned
to the yard

turning the yard
into

frustration of flowers
I have felt for

a knot in the soil
coaxing pulling at

bindweed roots
pulling gently so

they give
half inch by half inch

the vines wound
silently violent

round the necks
of black eyed

susans 
Name each

flower and the yard
loses

ground becomes
brunnera

bleeding heart bearded
iris

peony purple cone-flower
lupine lily

I enter the garden
I enter hackles raised

one finger then two three
sliding into the earth

It falls away from itself
like cake crumbs

If I lower my mouth to it
I can catch the grains

of dirt on my lips
sweep them

away with my tongue

A man who wanted
to tie me to a tree

once licked raw sugar
from my open hand

a policeman he wanted me
to behave

like an animal
From yard to garden

misprision  a prisoning
measure     of space

I hold up my hand
and drizzle strikes

at every target
but my palm

I cannot be touched