Summary
The speaker says that her hips can't be restrained and that they have never been enslaved. Instead, they go where they want and do as they wish. They are mighty and magical. In the past, they've seemed to enchant men, causing them to spin like tops.
Analysis
This second half of the poem begins with a deeper dive into the freedom of the speaker's hips, juxtaposing this state of freedom with a contrasting state of enslavement and therefore bringing into the work themes of black history and African American identity. For the speaker, bodily autonomy is revolutionary, since it takes place against a historical backdrop of forced migration, forced labor, and enslavement. The speaker's declarative sentences make clear that she considers autonomy her right, and feels no hesitation or anxiety around claiming it. "they go where they want to go / they do what they want to do," she says, the simplicity and directness of her language almost challenging readers to doubt or object to these points.
Following these lines, Clifton shifts her focus back toward the tension between decisive action and spontaneous freedom. The lines "these hips are mighty hips. / these hips are magic hips" both speak admiringly of the speaker's hips, but they spotlight different causes for that admiration. The word "mighty" emphasizes strength, especially physical strength, and in doing so relates connotatively to the speaker's resolute, determined, capable side. The word "magic," however, instead emphasizes a more mystical, unpredictable type of power—one more linked to the speaker's capacity for impulsive, capricious action. Together, these two qualities, of magic and mightiness, contribute to the speaker's power.
The poem ends with the first mention of a person other than the speaker, though this person is a generic type—"a man"—rather than a specific individual. Here Clifton inverts traditional gendered power dynamics, making the speaker the holder of power over a man. She enchants men, putting them under a metaphorical spell and making them "spin." However, the speaker does not wield her power cruelly or tyrannically. Rather, she is described as a kind of benevolent figure, putting men under an enjoyable spell through her attractiveness, confidence, and unreservedness. In these later lines of the poem, Clifton also employs simile and metaphor for the first time, most prominently in the description of how the speaker's hips "put a spell on a man and / spin him like a top!" This departure from the literal demonstrates an accelerated, intensifying imaginative and rhetorical power, with the speaker, as she grows more enthusiastic and offers more examples, using increasingly complex, fanciful rhetorical techniques.
