Lyn Lifshin, US

 

 

Free Verse from January Poems, 2006   Tangerine Blossoms   the house fills with, you’d think that sweetness would be enough, like the memory of my mother laughing on the phone to her college friend, relatives, a night that should have its own sweetness so close to the end. I get up, press my face to the flowers. It was after so much of the thick green fell, as if the tree was dying, the white perfumed beauty exploded     Strange Dream   I was there in such un-sexy flannel pajamas, moping, certainly not expecting the last one I felt my arms ache for, bikinis moisten, would suddenly be in my rooms. I say my rooms but they be— long to someone missing for the next few days. Not likely to return un— expected but for someone who hasn’t wanted anyone, it seemed a risk to take. Nothing was simple of course. A box from somewhere was leaking out against the floor boards, almost disguised. I knew I should do something but except for placing a few towels on what might as well have been blood or worse, it hardly mattered. I haven’t felt anything for so long and while this man seems a mix of others, I think he’s the one from the velvet couch. I don’t know what to put on after I shower, flannel doesn’t seem right. Better come wrapped in a towel, clear and sweet as it could be     January 9   colorless sky hanging on like the last leaf on the tree I don’t know the name of once full of singing birds, now ragged, torn shells about to be flint from all that nourished, held it     January 9, 2006   half song, only the blues, the glass half empty the no color pewter, darker inside, more ragged than the grey land scape, naked trees jut against ragged antlers     January 9   these blues, like any shade under the pentimento, the lines you almost but can’t make out. Shadowy, a wash that clouds, camouflaging. Must be high art since lately anything clear, anything you can touch, doesn’t seem to matter     Subway, January 9   I can tell, it’s the blue beret, the woman who sings at poetry open readings. Always an Irish song, always at the free Kennedy Center 6 PM concerts. “It’s Jesus,” she said last time, “he got me thru. I don’t go to doctors. Jesus and a little Glucosamine. You know I was run over by a bus, left on pavement. Doctors tried to lift me to a stretcher. Jesus,” I said, “that’s all I want. These doctors, with their medicine, I was broken, I couldn’t move but I wouldn’t take their pills, the doctors, forget them, only faith heals”     If You Write About what You Know Someone Says   you have no imagination. If it’s the blues I should use Scrabble words to describe men in a coal mine, all poly— syllabic. Alembic, Polymorphous, nothing you could see or touch, certainly not feel. I’d have the miner’s semaphores rise minus the distraction of a one trick retina, a Betty Boop dance, a wafer of the cross their languishing women taste falling and falling     Why Not The Scent Of Tangerines   the cat coiled near my body. Why not how that I don’t need a pale guide dog, lovely as the one with the woman in a wheel chair seems. That should be enough. Why not just go to the dictionary and pick out words that entrance? Be fragile and enchanting as someone said my words are or let the scent of tangerines spilling through the house intoxicate, blur       January 10, 2006   moving toward 50 degrees walking to the metro. Other years the false spring lured, a lover too charismatic, even knowing his past than the ones with good records. I was the girl who wanted only Daimlers and Aristocrats, no Chevy, no Toyota     Trying To Just Smell The Tangerine Blossoms   the light going, muskrats slither toward damp stones gold ripples under the pond’s pewter days from the day of the shortest light. Small animals under tawny dead reeds and lilies, black closing in but not so alone     Don't She Says Have A Baby On Your Own   my friend, who always seems up, even with some scary diagnosis for her or her man, who loves dinners with 40 family members, never says no, never shows she’s down but makes a joke about what terrifies. My friend, a beautiful dancer, the one who wouldn’t turn anyone down says to her daughter, honey, you can’t count on me to raise your girl, you know the cancer could come back again

 

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