cruelty, don’t talk to me about cruelty & what spells raccoon to me

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) served as Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland from 1974 to 1985. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy in 1999. Her poetry collections include “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988–2000” (2000), which won a National Book Award; “Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980” (1987) and “Next: New Poems” (1987), both of which were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and “Two-Headed Woman” (1980), which was also a Pulitzer Prize nominee and the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. “cruelty. don't talk to me about cruelty” and “what spells raccoon to me,” from “Next: New Poems,” by Lucille Clifton, © 1987, are reprinted with the permission of boa Editions, Ltd.