Lyn Lifshin, US

 

 

Free Verse from Cove Point   When I Read One More Story Of A Sleeping Child Being Pulled From Her Warm Sheets   raped, strangled, her DNA in the tears of a front seat. When I read one more story of the Holocaust, the manmade to sing Ave Maria as they got set to dynamite the cliff he perched on. I still can’t stand anyone who says they never watch the news, aren’t political and I know they probably have reasons for not wanting to reel into darkness, prefer talking to roses or saints but I can’t listen to their prayers for no rain, their certainty if they are devoted they can send tornados out to the sea by prayer. I want to shake them and ask where their prayers were when the child was pulled from her sleeping dog with only a purple stuffed dog when her tears stained enough to convict the rapist     When my Mother's Hair Grew Longer, Lush on IV   It was as if to make a pillow for her last bed. Her skin already pulling over her bones so her head was skull like. When she said her hair cut was kill— ing her, it stung like when she ordered Death by Chocolate.” It seems terrible, what happens to the body, the perfect teeth letting go as if in a hurry to get somewhere else while lines become graves around the mouth and forehead, trenches darkness fills. This broken body, once in 7 inch heels darting up Beacon Hill so fast no one could keep up with her     When I see Sarah Jessica Parker is Replaced by Joss Stone   for Gap, I’m thinking what happens happened again: the daughter replacing the mother, blooming as the mother starts to fade. I rarely write about being less young, a euphemistic way to beat around what I’m thinking. It’s like a man clutching a tumor growing big as a Siamese twin. There and tell me truly, can you stop looking at it? In your mirror, across the table. The lines that never mattered deepening, hair thinner. When I saw Joss Stone singing that Janice Joplin blues, gorgeous taut skin, Melissa Ethridge, bald head, both belting the blue blues out, Joss’s arms lovely, a white I bet nothing has slid from abruptly, leaving a burn, a scar and sure she’s hot and her teeth are lovely but I want Sarah, I want her blues, her over 30 beauty to mirror mine     Old Boy Friends   The deaf ones leave a note in the house you don’t still wait for him in, unable to call. “for old times sake,” he writes. Or was it a blow job? Others send postcards from Miami, they’ve said the same thing 16 years. Suddenly they stop. Your present boyfriend’s daughter was 7 when the post cards came. Now she’s wanting a baby. Most, you never hear from again. It’s a jolt to read their obituary, especially if you left them. Almost a relief with the ones you cared for too much No old boyfriends have called me for dinner or brunch. Once I could count them, the lovers at least waiting hours in an airport with nothing to do. They are probably on a list in a poetry notebook in some archives. I remember my cats, from 6 years old more clearly of course there weren’t as many. Old boyfriends come back in dreams and when I wake up I’m not sorry. One writes poems about a woman in clothes like mine who looks like me. Hardly any have asked for money or good wishes on a marriage. The ones, never quite lovers, haunt the most like a book you couldn’t put down but never finished left behind in some abandoned railroad station you won’t get back to again     Writer's Conference Brochure   Sunny in the new flyer. Everybody’s smiling, writing under the trees. It doesn’t rain, there are no lack of flies. Flowers in bloom. No one can see the poet who will black ball you when you’re not interested in his bed. Pine smell and night birds camouflage the novelist who packs in the night, moans “if I don’t get out of here I’ll become an alcoholic or gay. In the photographs, the giddy cradle their paper babies. It’s like a Christmas card of the Happy Family before news of any truth leaks out     Fashion City   Have you ever dressed up in those tawdry clothes? I’m asking because tho I wear tight low jeans, ultra sexy VS, find mini skirts superb for running after a train, but I’ve never been in one of those stores with fur g strings and lace panties with the crotch cut out. How com— fortable can they be? Or clean? I know garter belts are supposed to be sexy, especially with silk hose and nothing else. Even a fake cigarette in a black rhinestone holder might add to the look. But today I’m seeing the fish net and push up black bra, the little apron with nothing covering behind not as vulgar but something else: my friend’s husband is not well. She’s crying, even at tap and ballet. What you and even I might see as sleazy, she is squeezing into, pulling on with her fingers shaking out of love. This isn’t about yelping Fuck you with the finger, but more like a horse soothing somebody scared, a mother cradling a feverish infant. She is in what sounds to me like something I’d have trouble wriggling in or out of out of love, she hooks and smoothes to make him, after the diagnosis, forget what could be ahead     Sirens   almost daily, crossing the park, hear them, background noise. Not for me today, not for my baby. Not this time, not yet. Yesterday with trucks backed up I wondered if there was someone inside, behind the darkened windows, someone saying it will be ok. Maybe it will. Or maybe some organs are shutting down. Or the one under the mound of sheet is already dead. I wondered if a car collided with another no one can still drive. This time it is not me, forehead scalped, over 100 stitches. This time I can go on to ballet, past the dogs in the park nuzzling empty cups, buds swelling. This time     Cat Love   if you had a favorite pillow or worn cotton shirt it would be ok about loving it. But cat love is a risky choice. It sounds so sentimental and this isn’t even a dead or dying cat. Lets say it is not a cat but say an old bathrobe you feel comfortable in as a broken in lover where it’s ok to be quiet, not charming. Lets call my cat a bathrobe and think of curling deep in soft chenille—make it rose for the hint this cold March day of new buds unfolding. Think of her as some thing to wear, which I do. Haven’t you made a blanket of your dog or cat, let him lie on you like a lover, felt its heart and breath moving with your breath, so close to the parts of you that you share with your lover that when you sleep her soft fur could be his fingers?     The Man Who Puts His Hands Over His Ears When You Talk   might as well stuff a fist down your mouth to keep you from talking. Now you probably are thinking, aren’t you, admit it, that it was a whine or complaint because if you are like him, that’s what you think women do. But lets get this straight: It was morning and reading the comics was more important than my words tho he shoved on in the face that made no sense to me. Oh, I forgot to add, ask him, how I have no sense of humor and while we’re at it, I’m closed minded because I don’t believe an alcoholic 20 year old trying to adopt a 15 year old juvenile delinquent— oops, judgmental and horrible again but that was my opinion and of course I was shut up fast about that. And when I said “an escort service” did not mean a date for the prom, grenades filled the car. Forget that I’ve never see anyone levitate and fly around the room. I didn’t say it couldn’t happen, just that I’d be surprised. I can still feel the tsunami of those words. But this morning I was just about to say a woman in ballet offered to drive me to the metro in the rain when the clap of his hands shook the room. Now you listen, since he won’t, I may be skeptical. I may not believe the CIA should have continued research to see if they could spy on events about to happen in ten years with the mind. I don’t know but I know to me words are magic, the drug, the heroin of morning. Words are breath, the Eskimos said the same word for “to breathe” and “to make a poem” are the same word and when someone plugs their ears over what I am saying, all air, breath goes out of Friday

 

Read Additional Poems by Lyn Lifshin   in May 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin, US—Eight Poems from Cove Point:  When I Think of the Scar Where the other Car Scalped my Forehead; The Way You Know' Dark Horse; Sometimes When I See People In The Park With Their Lunch Bags From The Church; April, Paris; Circus; Remember When You Wondered What "It" Would Be Like?; Haven't You Ever Wanted To Use The Word Indigo?; Montmartre in April 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin—Five Poems from Cove Point: Ring, Child Prodigy's Time To Die, Something Great Mom Says, Blue At The Table In The Hot Sun, After 15 Years in March 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin—Three Poems from Cove Point: Music Hall, Diary, Photograph in February 2008: Lyn Lifshin—Three Poems from Cove Point: Cove Point, Door Mat, Better To Just Let It Go in May 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin, US—Eleven Selections from January Poems, 2006: Yellowed, In An Old Chestnut Trunk; January 5; Jan 5; January 5; January 7, Blue; January 7 Blues; These Blues; January 9 Blues; Blue Saturday; January 7; January 7; Hearing Something About "The Boston Phoenix On Air" in April 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin—Four Selections from January Poems, 2006: Rage January 4, 2006; January 4 Rage; Rage Even After  Ballet; Rage, January in March 2008 Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin—Three Selections from January Poems, 2006: January 4 Rage; January Rage; Rage, January 4 in February 2008Sketchbook: Lyn Lifshin—Four Selections from January Poems, 2006:  January 3, 2006; On The Metro To Ballet; January; Metro