Chihuahyua, Coahuila
drove for days in
the rose and blue
light of the desert
stoned on names,
ocotillo, coral bean.
By the sixth day the
aloneness got us, there
wasn’t a face or voice,
not even near the
hogans. Nights we slept
in the car with the
doors locked, locked
in ourselves: we were
like skin peeled from a
finger, shriveling,
having nothing to do
with any hand
The Erotic Mirror Dream
I walk past the heart-shaped
beds, the room of mirrors,
hope my new lover doesn’t
see my cheeks become the color
of the velvet hearts, the deep
rose quilt that spreads like a
dream I’d rather not remember.
In my hiking boots, I’m sixteen
again, hating to be called “whole-
some,” running out of the Carolina
living room when the sportscaster
on TV made me groan. I couldn’t
have flashed forward to rolling
anywhere with him, let alone under
a mirror where, even after vodka,
I could still see what I was doing.
I could be that TV in the photo
of the love suite in the heart room,
something that does not belong but
is stuck there. It snowed again all night.
I wished it had blurred the too
bright light I stumbled into. Only
the crystal prisms, those hard cold
edges I tried to make myself be,
only the lips and hair of so many
versions of me split and splayed
like a dead deer on a car kept me
from feeling totally alone
Falling for a Voice and a Laugh on the Radio
like someone blind,
loving a house for
the smell of the sea
thru shutters, lilac
and the slam of
cedar. Bees. Know-
ing as little about
his real fingers
as I do of how
glue dries in
outer space, I can
make up the way
they nuzzle hair
like moles or
cats’ noses, make
you do what I choose,
shipwreck in waves
inside my thighs
in that valentine
that stays no matter
how many times
it is sent
He Was Always Leaving as I was coming Around
dissolving into bathrooms
and out into the
muggy Hartford streets
with just his book
of poems in my
hand to assure me I
hadn’t imagined this.
When I tried to call
the phone had been
disconnected. he was
always shipwrecking
in other women’s
thighs when my
plane was taxiing in
to O’Hare airport.
We must have passed
each other on the
thruway outside
Des Moines. Sheets
he used were still
warm when I got
to Dayton, his
words, garnets
and sapphire that I
looked at dirty
snow in me thru
all one fall.
There’s more: both
of us stopped for 30
days in this house
like butterflies
under glass labeled
in separate cases in
the Smithsonian
only there’s a brook
that flows between
our rooms and neither
of us swims
Wet Leaves Close to Midnight
A stranger in black leather
he hadn’t expected would
really come tho he put
champagne on ice, maple
flowers dripping, the
strangeness of meeting
in a yellow kitchen in
too bright light as I
stumbled thru books and
firewood. Later he’d say
I talked too much, my
skirt hiking up his words
on Barcelona and Lorca.
Suddenly his lips and
fingers pulled me toward
the mattress. Balalaikas
and rain, skin rubbed
raw. My god he said do
you get paid for, you’re
so good at and suddenly
I was words written in
blue chalk under the
dripping lilacs, cheeks
burning as they had a day
I walked on Jay in glasses
and baggy denim and two
men came up, sneered are
you for sale or for real
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
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