Lyn Lifshin, US

 

 

Free Verse from Race Track Poems   Race Tracks   it was my sister, horse crazy and my mother waiting on the blue couch for the Derby as she had when she had her two girls there in the grey living room, even if one had her nose in a book. It was the horses, her babies, a Saturday she wished would not end. The first puzzle she bought, a white horse against blue, white as a Cavalia stallion and, near the house she grew up in, the photograph of her on a pony. She must have read The Black Beauty to us and the Black Stallion, books boxed in my garage. The black horses, the beauties. Did she tell me that? Did she open a way to the most unforget- able dark horse? Was there something unsaid, something planted like seeds it takes years to bloom, was that where the dark most beautiful Ruffian started?     As the Last Nests Fall   12 days before the darkest, what held blood and feathers unravels, ice blown from the pond, comes undone unravels as a woman who gets bad news, her days darkening faster. Hieroglyphs in the wind nothing still living can translate     December 9, Last Light   Apricot glazes windows, not even 4pm Geese tear grass thru snow. Spice tea in a cup of stars and lilies and, the cat, at least I still have her     Symphony   it’s too loud, then it gets louder. Poinsettia droop. Red’s big this season. “A stickler for details” some one belches as I imagine any place quiet, no hoarse tubas, no overdose of perfume but an iced grass walk, only goose music, stars, not these mink draped, plaid scarved over fed suburbanites. Too loud to eaves— drop, imagine a lover, imagine the hair of the man who writes of dogs, truck rambles and beer, Texas style more exotic to me than Paris. Call me cranky, just get me out of this over heated hall, take me to mesquite, the crackle of dried agerita, give me something I’ll want to be there to be with     Too Loud, Too Long, Too Hot   somewhere else, a full moon on iced branches, music of brush and leaves. Somewhere else a man I can imagine tossing my books in his truck as he takes off over back roads. Wind of cat fish and mesquite. Herbs that don’t grow east. I want out of this stuffed room of red sweaters and pins in the shape of horns and violas. Give me his chapped long hands, this man who never says much but has that look, that grin, that irresistibility and trouble story tellers always have been for me. The one legged man from Nam or the scarred runner, give me someone as impossible for more than a night or a few and let him yank me out of this hot, loud, poinsettia over flowing café where the end can’t come soon enough     Concert   It’s so loud I can’t breathe, a mist of rose and pine, suffocating somewhere else, moss in a quiet forest mélange of crawfish, someplace far from this hot room of poinsettia farts and too much red, too much perfume too much that keeps me from not imagining fingers that weren’t, will touch me, let me breath     Have You Ever Felt Like A   whore, pretending to want it? It’s not easy to admit? Isn’t it easier sometimes? You go thru the motions? Get it done? Some of my friends buy supplements, go to a store with crotch— less panties. I don’t know if it’s to get into the mood, or make it happen, happen fast. I’ve never gotten pasties. Ok, I admit it, I like cotton and flannel. Have you worn those string thongs that must crawl up every crack? Blue lace stretch bikinis were one thing. Thank goodness for the men who couldn’t care if I shave my legs, rubbed rose cologne into me. I used to leave tea rose and Chloe on lovers I didn’t trust my self not to care too much for, prayed jasmine on their sheets. Have you faked it, become good at fooling those sure they can tell? E mail or fax me, or better yet, send details, clues, advice because there’s gonna' be a time Animal Planet will turn me on more     December 12, 2005   rose light, licorice branches. Lavender strips, slate on the pond. Mirror images. Lights go on in the school where a slim blonde will touch her new breasts. Monday gone in a breath, pewter gone grey, vanishing like the mallards’ wake     Sometimes It Takes So Little   there was the one who took in a diabetic skinny stray, that was enough for me to want him. Or the one whose parents knew Dylan Thomas, had him as a guest. He hugged the blues. That one held me, stained me with that darkness, played Sea Sea Rider as he told me he had just heard two new folk singers in the city, Baez and Dylan. Story tellers seem to get to me. And the ones with a leg lost in Nam, that will do it. I was a door mat to his voice, knocked my knuckles raw trying to get thru to him. I never felt safe until he was dead tho his grave has followed me south. He is probably spinning magic under this first new snow at Arlington Cemetery. And what can I do with another man I’m haunted by who writes such small e mails I can imagine whatever I want out of them but now I’m knocked down by his stories. Sure it is icy and dicey and I’m walking a tight rope walk over spiked glass but when he writes of mesquite and cedar, the perfume of agerita blossoms in starlight I twist from the one who wants to keep me in his bed. I’m Texas bound under curly hair in search of this exotic with his dogs, rough hands and gun in the cold of January, ache for shimmery heat a coast away by stories I have no clue where they’ll end

 

Read all the Race Track Poems   Lyn Lifshin: Free Verse from Race Track Poems—Race Tracks; As the Last Nests Fall; December 9, Last Light; Symphony; Too Loud, Too Long, Too Hot; Concert; Have You Ever Felt Like A; December 12, 2005; Sometimes It Takes So Little   (This Issue —November 30, 2008.)