Eight by Lyn Lifshin

THE DEAD GIRLS, THE DYING GIRLS

Suddenly, no one else is as beloved.
Their last words, cherished as Jesus’,
their pink pajamas relics

something other than fire
enters a hole in their bedroom,
a sick lover, a director whose casting

couch is death. These girls are
beautiful on TV news, tear
you up without uttering a sentence.

Amber light turns them holy.
They play their role to perfection.
They leave DNA in their tears

#

THE DEAD GIRLS, THE DYING GIRLS

They turn up on newscasts,
before they turn up
for good. Perfect

teeth, like any movie
beauties. Innocent, smiling.
If you could reach thru the

screen to save them. If they
were probably pinned under a brute
with garlic breath,

in a turn off a turn. The
dead, the soon to be dead are
riveting. We watch like

the cat glued to the mourning
doves. The parents are holding up
their girls’ perfect teeth,

are crying. These girls rarely
come home as they were, grow
more beautiful in memory

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DEAD GIRLS, DYING GIRLS

There’s nothing else like them.
It’s breathless, grace while
they’re missing. Parents and
police clutch photographs
for the camera, the last pink
pajamas with feet in them.
Who has taken the girls, a
wild card. If she wasn’t
beautiful, she will be,
gazed at on cable, more
famous in the paper
than any model
for Vogue

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DEAD GIRLS, DYING GIRLS

no publicist could
get them as much.
They’re on the air,
on Santa’s lap,

in a costume with
a funny mask. The
girls are known
by their first names

like rock stars or
actresses. They
smile with a fake
nose at a birthday

party hugging a dog.
Their DNA stains
upholstery, is under
the last fingers that

tightened around them

#

DEAD GIRLS, DYING GIRLS

they are always the
smiling ones, the ones
you can’t imagine
anything bad could

could happen to.
Their white teeth
gleam, curls jaunty
as their grin, often

on the verge of a
giggle. They are the
girls you’d choose
if they were in a super

market aisle, picked
to be hugged and
spoiled. Some are
kissing a dog, a doll,

a baby brother. You
want to kiss them,
want their photographs
to dissolve into flesh.

You want them to
walk back in thru their
parents door though
they rarely do

#

DEAD GIRLS, DYING GIRLS

there are never ambulances,
they’d be too late. Usually
there’s a pick up truck,
an old rusty trailer in the

background. The girls have
bangs cover enormous eyes.
Jessica, Samantha, Meagan,
no Berthas or Myrtles.

The bodies are found and
identified later. Sometimes a
mother’s boyfriend is the
murderer, or a family friend.

None of the girls aren’t
beauties and will
always be

#

DEAD GIRLS, DYING GIRLS

before they show up
their smile is plastered

on air waves, on posters,
on trees. They are

on flyers those relieved
it isn’t their daughter

will trample thru streets
and leaves to post,

almost guilty this time
death has passed them by.

The dead girls are special,
are beauties. Their smile

lit up the greyness they
walked thru, made the

ordinary glow. For the
moment, no one could want

more than what they
can’t have back

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DEAD GIRL, DYING GIRL

they are always in
demand on the news.
Often in a pink dress
in photographs of

pink rooms. Dead
girls are pure
to imagine hog
tied and slaughtered.

You don’t want to
imagine the plot
but do. Even
dead or about to be

dead, these girls are
beauties. They can’t
help being so special,
so adored, riveting