From next (1988), "album" Summary

This poem is dedicated to Lucille Chan Hall, a childhood friend of Clifton. In the photo album, the poet looks at an early photo. In stanza 1, the photos are from 1939. The two Lucilles are having their hair curled by their mothers who wind the hair around rags in the practice of the time. The girls are having a drink from "shirley temple" cups and the girls drink it all up, inferring that they absorb and agree to all the inferences of wanting to be like the ideal Shirley Temple. Stanza 2 shows the perfect curls on the two girls. The intervening unnumbered stanza reveals that the two girls reject this image of perfection as they grow up. In 1958 and '59, in stanza 3, the girls have had children. The mothers hope that the girls will become their...