Lucille Clifton uses the words “paying” and “bills” (Clifton 1-2) within the first two lines.  Both of the words are both positioned by the word “Friday” which is a time element, by doing this Clifton is already showing us the relationship between time and money. Because fathers are excepted to provide the main source of income for the families, many fathers leave families all the time because of the stress of always having to be there for the family and having to provide a majority of the income for the family.  In Lucille Clifton’s “forgiving my father” the daughter is talking bad about the father.  This is shown through the remarks and name calling she does toward the father like “old” and “lecher”. The main point of Clifton’s piece is to show how the father cannot provide for his daughter, because his daughter is too needy, therefore she everything she cannot have. This can be seen through the name calling that she does with the father, the fathers financial state, and the fathers is trying to provide, but is financially unable too. 

We see evidence of the father being poor in many instances throughout the poem.  The main reason he is poor, is because he has no more money to go around and use on the daughter.  This is evident in the line “you were the son of a needy father, the father of a needy son” (Clifton 12-13).  This example really highlights why is poor now.  The father came from a father who is already poor and is now has a needy son who needs a lot of his money.  This father had to work his way up to produce this money since he started with none because his father had none.  And now all the money that he is using now is going towards his son, because his son needs it for some reason, weather that is an illness or a handicap.  

Another example of how the father is low on money is in line 21-22, we see the father owes money to debtors.  The money that he owes is more money that is taken away from his income and therefore less money he can spend on the daughter.  He already is dealing with a needy son, and now is having to deal with debtors who need his money.  While he can try to pay the debtors the little he has he will struggle to pay because he has little money.  Now all of his money is now being used toward paying the debtors and taking care of the very needy son, while he started with little money and make it on his own.  

We see the mother’s early death illustrated by “mothers… opens in her early grave” (6).  The daughter is now using the caring father for his money.  We also the use of verbal abuse toward the man, through the words “old man” (5) this causing the reader to think negatively of the father because we see that she thinks lowly of him.  But this girl is the one who needs to be thought of negatively because of the “bullying” she does by forcing her father to give her money.  She does not even consider his feelings when she says “old liar” (9).  When the daughter speaks about her mother we see she talks about her mother’s hand opening.  The father is now forced to give the dead mother money as well that the daughter, which she will use and waste on herself.  The hand opening symbolizes the daughter opening her hand for her money and her mother’s dead hand for her father’s money.  

The second stanza begins with time, and the girl talking about how there is no more time for her father, blatantly stating that she has no more time, and then calls him a “lecher” and “old liar” (8-9).  The daughter calls him a lecher for one main reason, she listened to her dead mother call him one repeatedly.  She then calls him rich, but since the money in this poem actually alludes to time we know that he was not rich in time because he was busy. He was always working which is seen for his “needy son” (13).  Since he had a needy son we see know that his son needed or wanted a lot.  The line before that, says the father came from a “needy family” (12).  We know that he worked hard because he grew up poor and with no money and then went onto support a family with needy children therefore forcing him to make a decent amount of money.  

In the poem the fathers “nothing” (Clifton 15) is everything that he can provide for the girl.  She saw her mother get little get nothing from him as well, but it is not nothing that he is giving them.  He is having a hard time making ends meet and the girl is setting lofty expectations for the father in that she is trying to get more from him, but he has nothing else left to give at all.  By the father having to take care of the son, the daughter feels as though she is not as cared about as the son because the son is needy so therefore gets more than the daughter.  But if the son has some sort of illness, nothing can stop the father from trying to help his son.  All the father can do is not provide as much for the daughter as he can for the son.

Clifton intended to show us how this father is struggling to provide for his family.  Clifton shows us this through the fathers actions toward the daughter and toward his son.  The father in the poem is already poor, because he was left nothing and now the daughter wants more.  In this instance the daughter is feeling like she is getting from the father, and it might be nothing, but the father is giving her everything because he is out of money and is trying to provide for her but is unable to because of his inability to make all the ends meet.  He just cannot provide for his son, and for daughter, and try to pay debtors the amounts of money that he owes to them.  The daughter calls the father rude names because she does not understand yet what the father is having to do. The poem illustrates how giving everything to some might mean you have to give them nothing.  
