 By: Michelle Duong

a woman precedes me up the long rope, her dangling braids the color of rain. maybe i should have had braids. maybe i should have kept the body i started, slim and possible as a boy’s bone. maybe i should have wanted less. maybe i should have ignored the bowl in me burning to be filled.

maybe i should have wanted less. the woman passes the notch in the rope marked Sixty. i rise toward it, struggling, hand over hungry hand.

 Born on 1936 with her class parents: Samuel Louis and Thelma Lucille Sayles  She was born Depew, New York  She began teaching in 1971 at Coppin State College after winning the Discovery Award from the New York YW-YMHA Poetry Center  she gives a full accounting of her family’s story in her 1976 memoir Generations  After attending Howard University and Fredonia State Teachers College, she worked as a claims clerk for the New York State Division of Employment

 Her great-great grandmother, Caroline Donald, whom Clifton cites as the inspiration for much of her poetry, was kidnapped from her home in Dahomey, West Africa, and brought to America along with her mother, sister, and brother  Her poetry is rooted in her experience as an African- American woman raised in an impoverished urban environment, who has a strong and enduring love for her family and community toonclips.com

She doesn’t use any capital letters in her poems Her poem stimulates the imagination when she describes her ghostly double proceeding her on the rope of life

 Imagery- a phrase that uses the five senses: hear, touch, taste, feel, and sight -a woman precedes me up the long rope, her dangling braids the color of rain  Simile- a comparison using like or as -maybe i should have kept the body i started,slim and possible as a boy’s bone  Alliteration- a phrase with a repeating constant - hand hungry hand

o ​ there are two themes in the poem: transformation and death o transformation is about her looking at a positive way of looking at herself when she is younger till now when she is older o death is about when she mentions that now she is older that there is a possible chance that she is going to die