When You Pulled the Barrettes Out
of my hair
reading Lorca
and Thomas, said
you like what
ever flowed, salt
sea in me moving
toward you, midnight
dissolving like
prints on wet
sand green ocean
licks. Tongue
on my ear. By
the end of the
rain haze, after the
Vietnam blues
song and Barcelona
lights dissolving.
your eyes let go
like the hand
of a murdered
lover turning
white under
ground, waving
goodbye
Afterward the Phone Dangles like Rope
someone swung from
for the last time. Dead end,
cut connections. My words
dissolve from your skin. I
draw blanks when you say
you are afraid with a woman
you’ve just met, know that
you might like her, be
vulnerable so you create
a distance. Life comes back
two years after the volcano
is on a newspaper scrap. I try
to imagine I’m in Italy. This
conversation is barbed wire
and I’ve taken off my clothes,
say I want more than a photo
graph. Snow clots and I can’t
remember what only that you
never touched me, just moved
your penis toward my mouth.
Once the stethoscope on the
quilt touched me like a hand.
The lilies had her on her knees,
air black with silver stars I
write on a slip of paper, not
knowing what to say, hanging
on like someone slamming
toward a brick wall in a Chevy
convertible who floors the gas
as if I could get thru
At the All Night Talk Radio Station
I get there early, fantasizing this meeting
over a year, already stuck on a voice I’m
sure I have to be with. The window in the
ladies room is open as I want to be in pale
pink leather jeans and flung open jacket I’m
imagining are my thighs. outside the open
glass, an April night full of branches
rubbing other branches. I lock the door and
flush a few times, huddling away from the
glass that doesn’t have a shade so no one could
suppose I’m gulping white wine to be up. I’m
determined this man not be disappointed,
wrap my self in vodka so whatever the poetry
questions are, no matter how silly the calls,
I will sparkle even tho I’ve an early flight to
Ohio in the morning. I carefully zip and unzip,
would hate to snag any of this leather I plan
to pack. I run the water, line my lips in guava
rose under the cracked mirror there’s only
fluorescent harsh lights above, highlighting
flaws I know won’t show over the microphone
in the darker room. A little mouthwash, a mint
and I let warm water spread my Tea Rose and
Chloe around so after I’ve left he’ll remember
and then sail, like a model leaving a velvet
lined dressing room, out on to the runway
as if what was ahead was all that mattered
Like the Print, Still on my Grey Wall
Where your Palm Pressed
after smoothing
baby oil on my
back and thights.
Later, the sticky
circles from wine
coolers on veneer,
all that connected.
Still, your voice
on my answering
tape is a drug
and when I stand
naked in front
of the mirror, I
expect traces of
you, stains where
your lips moved
like a survivor
of the A-bomb who
came to an aid station
with silhouettes
of the dead branded
into her cheeks,
her neck, up
and down her body
Hearing You I Think Drunk on the Air
I thought of those French
ditches the man who hung
stained glass where it would
turn a grey Wednesday
bright as diamond, too, told
me to try. Even your voice
floods this April, ground
water rising to take what
I couldn’t use away from
where it could flood, stain
whatever was surprised
by it taking stairs in me
6 at a time. Too expensive,
as you. And the dark water
like you only comes when
I don’t expect, am not ready.
If I had willows or mango
roots, star apple saplings
they’d hold on too, use what
throws me. When I hear it
rain, I remember those
Thursdays before Ravenna
it always thundered. The
room shook, the water
flowing in deep past barriers
into aquifers I’d hoard
twenty-three months
from my new book:
Before It's Light - Lyn Lifshin
$16.00 (1-57423-114-6/paper)
$27.50 (1-57423-115-4/cloth trade)
$35.00 (1-57423-116-2/signed cloth)
Black Sparrow Press
to forum