Episode 081 - [at last we killed the roaches] - Lucille Clifton

Connor and Jack look at a poem by the great, late Lucille Clifton. They discuss the human capacity for violence, roaches in the big apple, dual voicings of memory, and the poem's incredible last sentence.

More on Clifton here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lucille-clifton Check out her Collected Poems here: www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/books/…on-1965-2010.html

(at last we killed the roaches) By: Lucille Clifton

at last we killed the roaches. mama and me. she sprayed, i swept the ceiling and they fell dying onto our shoulders, in our hair covering us with red. the tribe was broken, the cooking pots were ours again and we were glad, such cleanliness was grace when i was twelve. only for a few nights, and then not much, my dreams were blood my hands were blades and it was murder murder all over the place.