Rage by Lyn Lifshin

a flower that
explodes, something
you once thought
you wanted to
curl near,
stroke, becomes
a nail bomb
breaking apart in
your throat
so even your last
words bleed

Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin

HE SAID THE NIGHTMARE POEMS BLEED

he said they were
too real to be
dreams. He said
they scared him,
a parallel world,
deeper than DNA.
Terrifying he
said, the words
were armed, were
bleeding all
over the page

#

WHEN, AT THE BALLET BARRE, THE MAD GIRL REALIZES

the only relief,
that she could
end it all, this
going thru the
motions. She is
sick of fantasy
being more real
than her life.
On the metro,
only gray. In
ballet, the gray
leaks in thru
her skin, braids
with a litany
of dreads. She
can’t remember
when she stopped
looking ahead
but only backward

#

TOO EARLY FOR THIS

October wind,
hardly a cricket.
What’s inside
curls into itself,
loses its color
like the maple.
Hardly a crow,
only a last blaze
of sun as if to
apologize for
all that's gone

Afterwards It Was Like by Lyn Lifshin

having a 16 year old
daughter who's only
had her license for a

month so when it
starts snowing, going
out trying to find

her, heading to where
she was going to
buy a gift, driving

behind her only to see
the car collide with
a pick-up and having

to pull her from the
burning car, her
hair ash and even tho

you're a volunteer
fireman, have done
this many times, when

you lay her body
down it might as well
be yours

- originally appeared in frisson #8 (1997)

Two by Lyn Lifshin

JANUARY 7 1985

east dissolves
like a man who
is just cigar
smoke by morning.
Ashes blow in
to the bread,
the cat throws up
what she gulped
down. In the
mail box, only
letters with
windows

#

THAT APRIL

the light on
Chinese dogwood

more substantial
than my own

body. The
bed a pool

with no bottom
where I treaded

water, pulled
at the

nothing
between us

- Both poems originally appeared in Joey and the Black Boots #20 (1998)

The Photographs, The Filmy White Gauzy Curtains by Lyn Lifshin

I’m flung back to 92 Rapple,
sheer curtains to the floor.
Silk spread, snow smooth,
palest ivory, wall to wall.
Bridal, exotic. How many
years was it, wondering, a
virgin still, a husband who
brought me tea in bed but
not what I longed for. In
the photograph, gauze
camouflages, lures. Soft
drams, no angles. And even
before the first lover came,
bottle of wine, Chateau y
Kempe hidden in the
closet, probably stolen from
some friend’s house in
Carmel. Months of letters,
photographs of him, one
of Dylan Thomas so I had
no idea what to expect
Fantasy was one thing. But to
have him: ex con, alcoholic,
stagger across the country
with a torn suitcase and
broken shoes. I had no idea
where to keep him and met
him at a motel up the street,
terrified there was something
wrong with me, that that
was why I was still a virgin.
By evening, I checked the
mirror, disappointed I didn’t
see a change in my face.
Nothing about the motel
room stays in memory. Or
when he started living in the
trees, sneaking in the back
door when my husband pulled
out in the Healy. That room,
so pure, so like a bridal chamber,
tho still pristine, the only color
not white in the room beside
the tiger cat, was his, my first
lover, and my body. After
love we’d read poetry all day.
Was it wine coolers or
scotch? He wanted drugs but
we had only nut meg. Like
silk draped over the railing
in the photo of this house,
my body fell over his. How
little I remember his smell,
how I felt with him inside me.
He was too big, he couldn’t
stay. He lit a match under my
window each night and I turned
the light on and off like a fire
fly signaling for a mate.
It was always a good story but
but it was getting so cold in
the woods he couldn’t stay.
The only place he can has been
for so many years
in poems

Two by Lyn Lifshin

WHEN THERE ARE MARIACHIS

when breakfast and lunch
are martinis. When
sheets smell of rose,
Bulgarian rose, Tuber
rose, that dark rose
in a bottle on my dresser,
musky as skin. When
it’s bolero or rumba.
When we leave the
room, and there is no
cat puke to clean up,
no terror of what’s
ahead. When you hold
me, should you hold me

#

THE MAD GIRL FEELS HIM IN HER FINGERS, HER SKIN

that almost pain chill,
a needle in her arm.
If you haven’t felt
it you don’t know
her. She wants more
and more. Wants
to audition for
flamenco at 2 AM
in a sketchy
part of town,
would break up
your family if she
could but only
for the lava
inside her. “Foxy
Lady” they yelled
at Muscle Beach.
Some days they
still do. What she
aches for is elusive
as a man made
of snow. Her first
poems had that
image in them. What
was intoxicating
and then melting
quickly, snow
flaked beauty, there
and then not. Now
only she warms
the place filled by
her body. All
she is missing and
starved for is
what she
can’t have

Three by Lyn Lifshin

WITHOUT KNOWING THE END

everything that comes
before it has to be
fiction. Still the moon
silhouettes your face.
Of course, that’s a lie
too. Only another
would see that and
there’s so little time.
The iris tosses its
shadow against the
mirror on the ledge.
Petals drying over
night as love does for
the woman who feels
too tired to leave,
too late to start over

#

BETTER SHE SAID

to put it in a
poem than in
your mouth.
No, it’s not
what you’re
thinking, not
that I haven’t
thought that
myself, not
just that he
is young, that
any ideal I
imagined, would
have imagined,
would have
been his
doppelganger.
It’s not only that
he loved my
poems, how
if I could have
kept him in
storage. Or my
self, waiting
for him to grow
up. But like the
chocolate straw
berry he gave me
and I kept, as
if to keep
him, now it’s
time, better in a
poem than
in me

#

DREAM OF AN OLD BOYFRIEND

suddenly, he’s not only
in my town but in my
bed. It’s not what you
think. He’s just flown
in from the Midwest
and is exhausted. It’s
not exactly a bed, more
of a sofa you can open up
and put sheets on. But I
didn’t expect him or
anyone and left it open.
If only he’d let me know
he was coming there’d
be no underwear or baby
doll pajamas flung around
the room. No matter. He
is in town to catch a
thief and maybe worse,
a rapist, murderer. The
local police have flubbed
the case, spit out too
much news so they’ve
secretly brought in my
ex, so secret I never knew
he was in this week. He
is long and lean. I remember
some of his best qualities
while other lovers fade
away. Neither of us are free
I don’t think but it’s the
old what goes on in Vegas,
only we’re not there,
somewhere else. When
we go out for coffee, yes
we stay dressed—suddenly
he is gone. In minutes I
see him leaping thru alleys,
sprinting up stairs like in
a Law and Order chase.
I’m impressed. His poems
were ok but this is wildly
different. I watch from a
distance. The streets of
people like a scrim. It
almost seems I’m watching
a film where you know he’ll
get his man. And will I?
Later back in the flat, we
collapse with a bottle of
wine. We’re kind of like
those friends in “Shall we
Kiss” when he’s asking her
to help him since he’s in
anguish with, for weeks,
no touch and they lie down
a little awkward and I mean
they’re friends and never
expected anything like this
but he starts to stroke her
breast, her thighs, under her
clothes and just watching,
well you can imagine in
the dream what is happening

Six by Lyn Lifshin

IN THE FANTASY

I come to where
there was nothing
that needs saying,
I’d relax in your
arms, each step
absorbed by
your body

#

AS IF IT WASN’T LIFE TIMES SINCE

I waited for David to call,
remember his fingers on the
sheer blouse under an aqua
felt jumper and never sure
if he’d call me again.
How could I not feel any
less unsure what to say
so many lovers later?
Too many ebony eyed
men. There were two with
frozen lake eyes but that’s
another story. I think of the
times I let poems say
what I couldn’t. Lured men
with letters, e mails with
so much left out they
could believe as they chose,
make me up as they wanted.
How could I still be
tearing the skin off my
nails, not sure what to say
to the one I’m sure I
said the wrong thing to.
There’s no time to wait till
he reads it in a poem

#

SOMEWHERE A ZIPLOCK OF HIS MASSY HAIR

when I dream of your hair,
water of a skeleton horse

what I can’t have

like horses screaming
tossing their burning manes

#

WHEN YOU FANTASIZE LOVE

you gallop your colt
into the burning stall

you might as well
picnic on a minefield

You check e mail, Face book

like someone trying
to hold on to

her slippery child
in a tsunami

#

AFTER THE WEEKS

My hair, how it
smelled after
bolero. After he
tells me about the
woman who took off
after her mean husband
left and how he trans
formed her. After
pleats were his
favorite, after the
curls he loved, the huge
chocolate strawberry
I couldn’t simply
swallow as I
could him. After
“so fresh.” How he
must have been
a killer for each
first fuck. On
Monday, as it
froze, he did too

#

THE MAD GIRL ALWAYS PICKED INACCESSIBLE MEN

deaf men she sang to,
the blind ones who didn’t
know her skin was perfect
when it was. She picked
the blackest eyes, as what
was inside was dark and
about to engulf her. For-
get the sunny blondes, the
blue eyed jocks. If a lover
was missing a leg, she
knew she could get even
closer to him. He said it
and she believed. If it was
not her fault, she was
sure it was. Redid herself
from the foundation. She
wanted the ones in love
with speed and booze,
dance away lovers,
danger and agony: a
black tulip kiss she
knows could kill her in
an hour as she opens her
mouth and shuts her eyes

Three by Lyn Lifshin

IN THE RICHEST DARK

not even there,
not in dreams,
nothing past the
touch of bodies
in a dance where
what isn’t could
make you cry with
fear and awe and
longing, that light
touch like some
vow that only
makes me feel
more close, a dark
full of ghosts, a
dark I can’t even
dream you in

#

WHEN I CAN’T STILL FEEL THE LONGING


when those mahogany
eyes are lost as
horses in thick fog
and I don’t even try to
dream you skin
closer than fingers
and thighs in a sizzling
tango. When what
glazed and glittered
but was deadly, when
dark in your head’s
black ice melts and no
thing is as terrifying
as the gun of wanting
you, pressed to the
back of my head
slides away, I never
felt so alive

#

WHEN I CAN’T STILL FEEL THE LONGING


when those mahogany
eyes are lost as
horses in thick fog
and I don’t even try to
dream you skin
closer than fingers
and thighs in a sizzling
tango. When what
glazed and glittered
but was deadly, when
dark in your head’s
black ice melts and no
thing is as terrifying
as the gun of wanting
you, pressed to the
back of my head
slides away, I never
felt so alone

Three by Lyn Lifshin

WHEN I WRITE THE POEM

I was raw. Weeks,
years, I mean I could
taste his skin the
whole country away.
Making anything up,
so dangerous,
the e mails between
us, tongues, no dry
kiss. Did I get there
too late? Was there too
much in both of us
missing? Just that one
brush of skin, margaritas
that turned me light
as any body of water
that could have flowed
around the brown
velvet couch. Back east,
I waited for his name
on Aol, the computer
a minefield. I dreamed
about him in Paris.
Were the poems revenge?
Or pain? Or the black
iris I couldn’t get
out of me? A slap, a
scream, tongue
of rage that now I feel,
especially in the ones
using his name, his
history, I feel so
guilty

#

NOT COLD, BABY NO

but lava. that
strangeness, wanting,
not sure, wanting
the strangeness. Here
mounds of the darkest
grey, the cold,
scars. Your words,
a quilt

#

DREAM OF WORSKHOPS, A THUNDER BIRD THE TOP WOULDN’T GO UP ON, TB, THE CRUSH, BUT MOSTLY SADNESS

I agree to give a workshop
for a month in the arts. Other
years it would have been
a thrill, a festival of film and
poetry but now everything
seems too much which is why,
maybe, I’ve missed my stop
on the metro, over shot it
like too many feelings this
week. When I try to get off
the train, all the stops are
unfamiliar, foreign and some
one whispers it’s a bad area
of town. Everybody has TB—
it dangerous but I have to take
the chance. I have to get back
and when I do, my convertible is
parked oddly on a street I don’t
know. The open top won’t
close right, like teeth on a
stubborn, stuck zipper when
you’re in a hurry and wind is
a blast of ice. I’m trying to force
it shut without breaking anything
but it is impossible to force, like
certain feelings, certain men
who even in fantasies don’t
behave. It’s better to leave who
they are unsaid. Then I find myself
in a group where there is a choice
of water sports. Turns out the
dark haired dancer lives across
the street. It interests me more than
it does. I could make a move.
He comes over put his arm around to
comfort, tells me I am making
big improvements but he knows
that’s not enough and I know
he’d offer himself and he knows
it too and we both know it’s
not a great idea, know it would
never change anything

Dreams: Lyn Lifshin

BAD DREAM

the night was hard work, dreaming,
the strangers in the house
stain the air. I was going to be
abandoned. I could tell and finding
my crystal beads tossed on the
floor, apt to be cracked, turned to
rose dust didn’t help. Or the man who
seems an intrusion stinking up the
bathroom. Before I slept, I was
appalled I had forgotten my Abyssinian
cat’s birthday two days ago though
I remember it was the date Harper and
Row took my book. Was I the cat,
abandoned in my Sunday depression
though I always remember my cat before
her died Feb 11, 2002. The guests
seem oblivious to me, they are cocky,
the singy, touching types. I wanted out,
to get out before I was abandoned.
Then I wake up shaking, horrified thinking
it’s never been so long since I talked
with my mother. And then, like the
man with Alzheimer’s, going thru his
daughter’s death each time he sees
her in her coffin, remembering, awake
I can’t go to see my mother,
she’s dead

#

DREAM OF NEEDING SPACE, OF THINGS CAUGHT FROZEN

fast shots of a dancer
in muted clothes
shooting thru space
needing a lot of space
around the greys and
guavas nothing
red Gitana's favorite
color nothing bright
as blood but muted
colors frozen in a
cube of glass every
thing suspended it
can't grow or die
What I say is caught
in ice that won't melt

#

LUST BLOWING UNDER THE DOOR, BRIGHT AS STRAW

Your smile’s like sun
flowers he said
as tho
embarrassed his
hands were
pressing
awkwardly the
ring on his
second finger
close to her
eyes
from that room
a wheat sea
lust
blew under the
door bright
as straw
and his warm
parts on
her belly
those small
bones that changed her
small
bones to water
And not even
knowing
his name
until later
when the floor fell
the room
turned into a
painting
and the paint cracked

#


BAD DREAM # 279, JUNE 22

I go back to Vermont, to Middlebury.
It’s been a while, another life time?
And the uncles, the dead ones hover
in shadows, ghostly, their lips and
cheek bones on faces that some
how aren’t there but then, nothing is
as it was. The beautiful bookstore
with the flat above it where I dreamed
in my lavender back bedroom of
starring on Broadway or writing a book,
now looks like collapsing bricks about
to be bull dozed. This can’t be. There’s
no bookstore, no sign there’s ever
been one. The bricks shift, the building
looks like something too dangerous
to enter after a hurricane, a house of
tooth picks one small breath could
make fall down. Even Main Street, a
perfect New England small town
where Life magazine came to photo
graph this perfect calendar frame, the
red and green lights strung for Christmas,
children on sleds and of course the traffic
police who checked out every boy who
came to pick me up for a date my
mother would wait up for me from.
Have I been comatose a hundred years?
Where is the town I knew? What could
be left but mice and droppings in the
mostly abandoned street. Drug vials litter
the street instead of flower boxes and
geranium. When did the town become
a slum, a torn blighted disaster? The
only color is gray. It’s as if the mortar,
whatever held all that mattered together
dissolved. A heart beat. Just the touch
of one brick and everything I thought I
could keep will crumble

#

BALLROOM

I want to be
air and flame,
my arms wings,
my feet beating
the ground
for take off.
I want the
grind, the
shimmer of his
pelvis, my
skirt flaming,
want him to
hold me in a
frame nothing
wild escapes from

Mustache by Lyn Lifshin

I was thinking
of it this
morning, those
marvelous hairs that
curl around your words

and how they smelled with
frost all over
in the mountains

And yes especially of that
time on the floor
looking like the
middle part of a thick
leggy bug I could

just see
above my belly, moist and
floating up
asked

is this
making your blood glow

Three by Lyn Lifshin

WAS THAT US WHEN

your cats were
my cats?

The golden room with
one mobile over

blue sheets?
Blinds let the moon in

and before it
thundered, before

breath moved quick,
then quick and

slow, we made
little rooms inside

each other’s body

#

ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DREAMS--A BAD ONE # 459

Tho I’ve been turning down
readings, when a woman I
never heard of writes me she
sold out her books at a shop,
I take the next offer. It’s in
Boston. That should be good
and tho I have driven so little—
sure, I got my license my 16th
birthday, couldn’t wait to take
my uncle’s blue convertible
out with my friends and of
course drove it into a ditch—
but no matter, no one ever
knew and that’s another story.
In the dream, the man I’m
with comes with me for a
night before I perform but
even then, it’s not ok. The
hotel feels strange. Worse, he
is feeling horny. I’m nervous,
the reading is beginning to
gnaw and some of my clothes
are missing. It’s been years
since I drove in any city. As
it gets closer to the hour I
need to go, I fall apart. I’m
churning and then I start to
scream, hysterical, yes I am
and I’m not quiet about it.
I know I can’t do this. I don’t
even know how to use the
GPS and signs are in a
mysterious language. “Isn’t
there a bus?” I yelp. How
much would a cab cost?
I seem about to implode and
explode at the same time.
Mirrors are shaking. Clothes
strewn over the floor. I
am late and I’m not dressed.
I’m so wild my friend
is pissed, and screams,
spits “why the hell did you
take this reading?” Suddenly
we are on a very crowded bus
with a store size rolling rack
of my clothes, as if I can’t
help dragging everything I’ve
touched or loved around with
me but there’s nothing I want
or need to wear. I decide I
will just read from my old books,
can’t bear to try out new things
tho I have two new books.
Then I see I have left my books
behind. I can’t do a reading
with out my poems. My friend,
disgusted, snarls “no way we’re
going back.” I see he means it.
If there is a book buried in the
clothes I don’t see it. Suddenly
I realize I don’t have the address
for this reading, any idea of
the street name, no phone number

#

THE DEAD SISTER

when a sister dies, you
kneel in a pile of
old letters, something
inside, a dead fetus
weighted with stone.
You don’t need to
google her. In dreams
she is in the emerald
and green that made
her eyes blaze. When
a sister is dead she
can’t still hurt you.
She can’t still
hold you

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

#

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

#

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

#

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

Six by Lyn Lifshin

AS THE LAST NESTS FALL

12 days before the darkest,
what held blood and feathers
unravels, ice blown from
the pond, comes undone

unravels as a woman
who gets bad news,
her days darkening faster.
Hieroglyphs in the wind

nothing still living can translate

#

222 JACKSON AVENUE

I still thought
the tumbleweed would

remember me, the
willow arrange her skirt

and only one blood maple.
Each day, life

was in the rear view mirror.
My uncles with tennis

clothes, my sister’s
bangs. I was never wild.

I only imagined that
on paper,

moved as if under water,
untouched

#

222 JACKSON AVE

there, at 1:45 I
pull the quilt closer
as if arms that
could do what
none left can.
The cat stretches
on my lap. I think
of how she said
“if you can’t
sleep honey, call
me, it will be like
a pajama party.”
I wonder who was
lonelier

#

HAZE OF ROSE LACE

how many years,
Japanese plum
petals unsticking
themselves from
themselves, a
chrysalis

a delicate
assembly of
flesh tones
and mauves

seductive as
skin under
silk and gauze

How many years
since you?

How many more?

#

BAD DREAM # 2791

it stings, it’s the
way salt clings after
a dip in the Atlantic.
The old Vt house,
its enormous from the
first frame on,
abandoned at the
edges. On the top
floor, my mother is
dead. It can’t be her
my heart is insisting.
She has to be here.
In the room the
piano I sold is still
untouched, waiting.
The sister, -- sister
no more—is the
only other person in
this house some
walls have washed
away from. Spaces
on stilts, air and
sea, snow could fall
thru. Nothing is
rooted. My sister
even is a ghost. No
thing seems to be
important enough to
matter except terror
that I didn’t go to
see my mother more

#

WITH YOU, IT WAS NEVER LATIN

nothing that fiery,
nothing like a mambo,
nothing as flaming.
With you it wasn’t a
wild free dance
but restrained,
something always
held back. Like any
dancer about to
collapse I smiled thru
the agony, the rises,
the falls and because I
concentrated so on
keeping our frame
strong, my head back
leaning to the left
and away from you,
away from your eyes,
past your ears I
never knew what
you were thinking.
I could only follow

Four by Lyn Lifshin

DECEMBER 2, AFTER THE FIRST DAY OUT OF THE HOUSE

I could be the
fish who climbed

from the sea into
the razzle dazzle of light

down red brick streets.
Thai spices perfume

them, U Street rocks.
The young on dormers,

on bar stools, their
music spilling into U St,

chestnut smells,
laughing instead of

guns

#

DECEMBER 7

the furnace leaps on,
highs in the twenties

under the ice
fish listen with

silvery plants of
life, the sky

an ice grey,
the water lilies

under them, spring
in their belly.

Stairways of
frozen grass.

Blue shadows.
Beavers’ prints

in melting snow.
Something in the

pond, my own
half drowned

longing, blue gown
of sleep that

can’t sleep

#

DECEMBER 12

If I hadn’t noticed
the pink streaks,

the pond a mirror of
trees on their heads

gone in a breath.
Still the muted rose,

dusky as a stranger’s
lips, there and

then not there.
When I read

your words, not a
part of my body

feels like my body

#

DECEMBER 15


white sticks to the grass.
I first wrote graves.

Gulls make snow angels
where for the first time

an old lover is where
I expect him to be.

Mounds on mounds,
iced bowls of pond.

Schools not closed,
close early. Star

trails burn down.
White camouflages.

His last words,
they can’t be true

Three by Lyn Lifshin

HAVE YOU EVER READ PASSIONATE POEMS

poems so erotic and tense,
not just nights with a stranger
poems but long married
love, no lust poems and felt,
just felt somehow you weren’t
quite with it? Fell short?
Come on admit it, have you
ever felt as turned off as walking
thru a sex shop to find fur
crotches, crotch-less pants,
more uncomfortable than sexy,
dirty as carrots jerked out of
earth where they’d been in
darkness, earth still clinging.
Haven’t you, be honest, felt
what was forbidden turned you
on more, the press of a thigh
in a smoky café, Austin, some
one you’d never stand near
brushing your teeth and flossing?
Haven’t you ever felt the act was
as little different than being one
of the girls in a whorehouse?
Putting on a show when you
want to sleep and dream of some
one faceless doing what seemed
too clear for magic?

#

NOT FEELING LIKE WRITING ANY LOVE POEMS

tho I want to feel like I do.
Longer ago than I’ve
known the one I’m with,
it wasn’t the moist gasp
on streets I’d the feel
of his hand on my
neck at the book sale,
fingers on what aches and
the sound of the garage
door opening, how he
sings “I’m home,” at the
stairs with ginger muffins,
pears. I’ve too often needed
to know weekends would
not be alone, am too
tired of putting up a mask
for men who hardly
know me. When a friend
dresses in a g string tinsel
and cheetah pasties to
add spice, charm the man
she knew as a kid or
read of old marrieds
thrashing in smell and wet
skin down there, sperm
and semen, beloved
perfume, I am a ghost
looking down at somebody
in or out of my clothes,
my body, moving
by rote

#

HAVE YOU EVER FELT LIKE A

whore, pretending to
want it? It’s not easy
to admit? Isn’t it easier
sometimes? You go
thru the motions? Get
it done? Some of my
friends buy supplements,
go to a store with crotch-
less panties. I don’t
know if it’s to get into
the mood, or make it happen,
happen fast. I’ve never
gotten pasties. Ok, I
admit it, I like cotton and
flannel. Have you worn
those string thongs that
must crawl up every crack?
Blue lace stretch bikinis
were one thing. Thank
goodness for the men who
couldn’t care if I shave
my legs, rubbed rose
cologne into me. I used to
leave tea rose and Chloe on
lovers I didn’t trust my
self not to care too much for,
prayed jasmine on their
sheets. Have you faked it,
become good at fooling
those sure they can tell?
E mail or fax me, or
better yet, send
details, clues, advice
because there’s gonna
be a time Animal Planet
will turn me on more