Lyn Lifshin

HIGH HEELS

by Lyn Lifshin

They’re like wanting to

keep a man, keep one

on ice for sometime

later, they’re like a dress

3 sizes too small I know

I’ll slide into. Hell, I

could wear it now and

let it hug my ass so tight

you’ll want to tear it

off me. In two houses:

boots under the bed, S

& M boots one English

professor called them,

boots that tilt my pelvis

forward, toward you. I

want to strut thru Dupont

Circle, black boots a

dominatrix might wear,

stab heels you’d have to

be afraid of me in. My

mother wore spike heels

into her 70’s, up Beacon

Hill and over at least one

man’s heart who still

saw her as twenty. When

I’ll put those boots on

you’ll never believe I was

not always in shape. I’ll

outstrut any Barbarella

or Barbie. Men in cars

will run into each other,

the legs the last thing to go

and I’m not ready yet

for any one way ticket

The Geranium

Lyn Lifshin

I am going to stop thinking

of the I’m sure dead geranium.

I know it’s come back, like

a love you want to keep on

with since it seems there’s

been so much you’ve been thru

together. The wild red flame

flowers, even before any

buildings burned, before any

thing burned in me so wildly.

It’s only a plant, not some

one dying in a colorless

hospital room, their body

enough like a flower in water

that already smells. I kept

this flower going like an affair

I put too much in to leave.

And now I’m left with

what’s dead

When I Think of the Child

Lyn Lifshin

clutching her purple dachshund

kneeling, under the earth.

How long, the plastic tight

as the rope. Only the stuffed

animals familiar as light

went away. When I think of

a child snatched from warm

sheets, her toothy grin and wide

eyes, her sweet smell in

pajamas, skin, baby shampoo.

lilies. I can’t believe even

the ugliest, the ones whose

breath must reek of rot, can be

anything but a monster, not

an animal, not human but

built of decay and slime, some

thing nothing alive would

not want to turn their eyes from

The nausea of something dead

walking, creeping into her

flowered sheets, the curtains pink

tasseled. There like a mud

slide, a tsunami, a plague as

even something that could

sit back and switch on, goes out

for a beer. Under the earth,

the child not yet dead

MYRA’S MOTHER

Lyn Lifshin

the call, a dark

whisper spreading

its stain thru sorority

walls. “Electric

blanket.” “Fire.”

“beyond recognition.”

The way a child was

there in flannel

pajamas and then

isn’t, her mother,

overnight. The body

could have come

out of the ovens in

Auschwitz. It was

before “Holocaust,”

the word was more

than a whisper.

“What they did to

young girls,” before

Myra even imagined

her babies with a

grandmother who’d

be at her weddings.

“Myra’s mother,” the

snow, the Syracuse

grey wind. Sometimes

traveling I call a

neighbor, check the

house, if I’ve left

anything that could

catch fire

Lyn Lifshin’s ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME was just published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006. It has been selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for previous finalists of the Paterson Poetry Prize. (ORDER@GODINE.COM ). Also out in 2006 is her prize winning book about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian: THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MY YEAR WITH RUFFIAN from TEXAS REVIEW PRESS. Other of Lifshin’s recent prizewinning books include BEFORE IT’S LIGHT published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of COLD COMFORT in 1997.Other recently published books and chap books include : IN MIRRORS from Presa Press and UPSTATE: AN UNFINISHED STORY from Foot Hills and THE DAUGHTER I DON’T HAVE from Plan B Press. Other new books include WHEN A CAT DIES, ANOTHER WOMAN=S STORY, BARBIE POEMS, SHE WAS LAST SEEN TREADING WATER and MAD GIRL POEMS, A NEW FILM ABOUT A WOMAN IN LOVE WITH THE DEAD, came from March Street Press in 2003. She has published more than 120 books of poetry, including MARILYN MONROE, BLUE TATTOO, won awards for her non fiction and edited 4 anthologies of women=s writing including TANGLED VINES, ARIADNE=S THREAD and LIPS UNSEALED. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, LYN LIFSHIN: NOT MADE OF GLASS, available from Women Make Movies. Her poem, ANo More Apologizing@ has been called Aamong the most impressive documents of the women=s poetry movement,@ by Alicia Ostriker.@ An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical series, AOn The Outside, Lips, Blues, Blue Lace,@ was published Spring 2003. WHAT MATTERS MOST and AUGUST WIND were recently published. TSUNAMI is forthcoming from BLUE UNICORN. Arielle Press will publish POETS (MOSTLY) WHO HAVE TOUCHED ME, LIVING AND DEAD. ALL TRUE, ESPECIALLY THE LIES summer of 2006. Texas Review Press will publish BARBARO: BEYOND BROKENNESS in March 2008 and World Parade Books will publish DESIRE in March 2008. Red hen will publish PERSEPHONE in March 2008. And Coatalism Press is publishing 92 Rapple. For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com.