Lyn Lifshin

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Lyn Lifshin has published over 140 books and chapbooks and edited three anthologies of women's  writing including Tangled Vines that stayed in print 20 years. She has several books from Black Sparrow books. Her website shows the variety of her work from the equine books, The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness to recent books about dance: Ballroom, Knife Edge and Absinthe: The Tango Poems. Other new books include For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl goes Into The Woods;  Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems.  Also just out: Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle; Malalaand Luminous Women: Enheducanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti.

LATER,   GOING   BACK   TO   WHERE   MUSIC   POURED   FROM   THE RAMSHACKLE   PAVILION

                  

Not even a sign. Cove

Point. The dance hall

beams shuddered.

Scrubby weeds cover

where Pinky Johnson’s

fiddle doesn’t echo

in the dead leaves.

Summer nights,

aching to be wanted.

The lake’s green

breeze couldn’t keep

my cheeks from

flushing, wild to not

look like I cared

too much until some

one tapped my

shoulder. Fern musk,

trees bent into the

water. Without my

glasses, Pinky’s bow

and fingers blurred,

dancers, a swirl in the

lantern light until

the last dance, the kiss

in the center then

gliding home in

the dark, vowing not

to wash off that taste

WITH   EVERY THING   OPENING,  PEARS, MAGNOLIAS,  CHERRY   PETALS,  APPLE, DOGWOOD

The dead bloom, planted so

long ago. You never expected

much from them. It’s as if

with everything exploding, they

want you to marvel at them

too. The beauty of the plum

tree pales “short lived compared

to us.” “Yes, they are lovely,”

another sighs but remember how

I brushed your hair, washed it

in lemon juice. Doesn’t that

count?” Sometimes the dead are

 too loud, their fingers clutching,

hissing, “what do you remember

of the way I used to look?”

One newly dead reminds me of

the lilacs he left in a blue

Persian jar. The dead are sure

you would like to see them

and you would but you’re not

sure how much to say, bring

the green emerald sweater you

bought too big for one to wear.

The new blossoms must want

to make the dead tell you what

they hadn’t. They’ve been still

all winter, their season. I want

to just watch new life unfolding,

the mourning dove on her

nest, the wild plum, camellia.

But when I try to sleep with the

window open, the night bird

in blue wind, it’s always my

mother’s voice, “Honey, why

haven’t you called?”

ON  THE  NIGHT  THE  MOST  HANDSOME  POET WALKED  OUT  OF  THE  SCHENECTADY  COMMUNITY COLLEGE  READING  ALONE

Headed up State Street

it was June, still light.

Alone. I couldn’t

believe it. The last

raspberry light over

the old downtown

buildings. I watched

him pass Proctor’s,

the only lit up building,

past boarded up cafés.

I could not believe

there was not a flotilla

of women behind him.

I had not written a

poem yet, I was afraid

to ask him to auto

graph the book I

clutched. Alone. After

all the women he

left in tears. Sometimes

sent yellow roses to.

Sometimes mourned

on the page. Alone.

The most handsome.

Even years later

I could never tell him

it was like seeing

a Bugatti, a Lamborghini

somehow in the living

room to see him just

leaving alone,

strolling thru the town

empty as a De Chirico

painting while I stood

with my mother in

front of the bookstore

that no longer is,

held my breath

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