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

REALLY, HAVEN’T YOU WONDERED WHAT SHE LOOKED LIKE

the woman in Paris who lost her face

Lyn Lifshin

under the mask, the

girl with no face.

It’s the way you cringe

to see, not see bodies

at a crash site or

Siamese twins in

formaldehyde jars.

And when someone

gasped at her new

face, didn’t you

wonder, just want to

scream? Can you

imagine before this?
What did they imagine

she could do with

no nose, no lips,

no chin? Hole up

with the shades drawn

playing Hickory Wind?
“I couldn’t lose

these honky tonk

blues” Sure, she

never could lose her

good ol’ indigo

blues, her dark dark

sapphire aching.

Haven’t you wondered

if you’d go on with

out a face? A freak,

alone. Worse than even

the Hiroshima maidens

who went out but only on

a night with the other maimed?

How would you like to go

to CVS or the movies

and have people

stand back or look away.

Or walk past lipsticks

knowing you have no lips?
No makeup can save you.

Hard enough not to

be dewy-faced and twenty

with a swan neck, sans wrinkles

and droops. If it was

her own dog that tore her

from herself, could she ever

want another again? She could

not eat or talk or smoke

a cigarette. If it was you,

what would you do that didn’t

seem a waste or bother?
Nap? Try gulping vodka?
Plan a real suicide, not one

that would leave you not only a

physical mess but with no

smarts left to plan an exit?

When I Watch the Figure Skater

Sasha Cohen

Lyn Lifshin

her two minute program

intense as the Kentucky

Derby. Her eyes, her

beauty. Perfect, vulnerable

as mythic horses, a sliver

of blue silk I can imagine

a terrorist’s bullet

slashing. The ice, a

Rorschach of blood,

a Jackson Pollock of

dripping red splotched

on the rink. Still

nothing can protect her

as nothing can save

the most spectacular

horses from aging.

You wouldn’t want to

see Secretariat those

last days one groom

said.There is no use

talking of Sasha’s

perfection, February

21 no matter all the

medals can’t shake

this knowing it will

end. One morning that

perfect skin will pucker,

those blue eyes dim,

will open on nothing.

What was perfect, a

figure in a glass ball

snow blurs. Some curtain

not even cloth yet, will

twitch as a gate opens

on the image of a girl

spinning and knifing ice,

darkening like a black

horse flying over the

finish line

HAVEN’T YOU SOMETIMES WANTED TO WRITE A POEM THAT CELEBRATES

Lyn Lifshin

but isn’t gushy, say something

about the first snow after a

winter of only dustings? You

see those shots on TV of the

Washington Monument in a

rose glow with crystals falling.

Well, I just think what a bitch

it will be walking in the road

where the edge of the road is a

drift and there’s no path past

the goose pond. I think “black

ice” for days as if something

isn’t always there, lurking,

about to slam you off your

feet. You hadn’t seen it coming.

Snow doesn’t say fun or beauty

tho I hear the neighborhood

children yelping like seals

rolling in white snow angels

across what passes for a lawn.

Was I stained with the blues,

is that why the first poems

I wrote is for what keeps

dissolving like snow flakes in

a child’s burning hand?

FOUR YEARS AGO VALENTINE’S DAY

Lyn Lifshin

It was three days after

what I wouldn’t hold

again and too soon to

know I’d ache for what

wasn’t worth hurting

for. I looked for red on

the metro, just one lip-

stick-colored suitcase.

Inside my hood I hear

the world going away

though clearly not enough

of it. A man twice my

size, reeking of smoke,

coughing in my direction

wedges into my space.

Other Valentine days,

the agony and ecstasy,

roses and chocolates

that must have come

through the snow but what

I remember most

clearly, that Valentine’s

Day in a flouncy green

dress, running through the

hall of Chinese wall

paper: my thumb flung

into plaster as if that

small part of me was

everything in me, wild

to rocket into the arms

of anyone who could

hold or want me. Instead

I went to the dreaded

Valentine’s Day party.

I wasn’t sure I would

not feel on the outside

abandoned, left

out as I was to feel from

then on, went with the

clunky, ugly heavy cast,

a cage around what

might have been every

thing I felt I was

Years After Her Mother Hung Herself

Lyn Lifshin

after she ran from

city to city, from

arms, from any

thing farther ahead

than the next Friday.

After the months

with a man who

made up songs

for her, said she

was beautiful and

months after a

plastic stick with a

pink line told her

other plans were

on hold. The ob-gyn

calculated the baby’s

due date, her birth

date, the day her

mother bowed out

before she planned

the birthday celebration.

She was terrified the

day of her personal

horror would be

shared by the

next generation though

friends spun it, said

it would heal. The

contractions didn’t

get hard until 4 days

after that. 59 hours

after the first tremors

hit her belly, hours after

the epidural wore off she

pushed her daughter in

to the world, it wasn’t

her mother she was

thinking about or her

sister cheering her on or

the man who watched,

tearful, as the baby poured

out. She thought of

nothing, just lay there

shocked by pain and

exhaustion. But, she said,

when they finally returned

her girl’s raw chicken-like body

to her after bathing her,

her first thought was

she looked like her mother

HAVEN’T YOU EVER REALLY

Lyn Lifshin

just wanted it all

to end? I mean don’t

you get sick of just

trying to stay on top

of what too many

days is only breaking

down? The vitamins

and cat shit, the

creams to keep what

can’t be helped and

more. Some say the

dying feel every

day counts, go through

torture for a few

extra. But truthfully,

call it vanity or

jealousy, when you

see those half your

age or less just

starting, do you ever

want to rush out

and whisper “wait,”

tell them the dirty

secrets time plays and

if you don’t know

what I’m talking

about, you’re lucky

LAMBORGHINI

Lyn Lifshin

there, slithered thru

grey sludge of coming

home thru Sunday

traffic, this fog

hanging over D.C.

Suddenly, as if it

came in a dream,

slithered from

Patagonia, extinct,

everyone thought,

certainly dead as

I’ve been. It could

have been you there

in the café that does

not exist, your leg

grown back, the bad

cells in a film run

backward, not even

dysplasia yet. That

car was you, flashy,

a heart zap. Totally

unattainable and of

course too expensive

for me to consider

for anything more than

a highjacked night

with hell to pay

in the morning

The Old Woman Floats over the Coffee Tables

Lyn Lifshin

in the store that no longer

is in downtown Schenectady,

comes back in dreams, ghostly

as fur the child in Tamarind threw

out the dining room window

after the mother cat howled under

the panes for her 4-day old kitten,

hissed and spit. So the child

could hear the yowls, she tried to

cup her chin and lips and threw

the howl out on the stone, heard

the thud and dreamt of the

hobbling blob the next twenty

years. The hunched-over woman

who’d fold and unfold her blue

napkin swoops down, a dark crow,

my mother’s eyes when I said,

though I didn’t believe it, said it to

sting, said it because my mother was

already late getting to the phone

on the first ring, had to sit down

in shopping malls, “that woman

should stay inside.” My mother’s

eyes went black flame. I could

have thrown that curled old woman,

with the shriveled form my mother

would grow into, onto the pavement

on Main Street. My hiss of verbs,

flung back at me in bedrooms I’ve

felt the rustle of her loose skirt in,

a wind of feathers and caws, a death

mask above the sheets, her cane a

beak. My mother merges with her,

yelps with the cat’s growl, leaps

past feather spreads coming back like

that ghost cat to where I listen in

darkness for some sign, some word

out of dark feathers, a whisper that

hasn’t come that it’s ok

Was That Us When

Lyn Lifshin

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

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. Lifshin’s other recent prizewinning books include Before it’s Light published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. 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, The No More Apologizing, the No More Little, Laughing Blues has been called among the most impressive documents of the women’s poetry movement, by Alicia Ostriker. An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical series, On the Outside:Blues, Blue Lace, was published Spring 2003. What Matters Most and August Wind as well as She was Found Treading Water Deep out in the Ocean, In Mirrors, An Unfinished Journey and Novemberly were recently published Tsunami is forthcoming from BLUE UNICORN. World Parade Press will publish Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched me, Living and Dead. All True. Especially the Lies.. Texas Review Press just published Barbaro, Beyond Brokenness 2008 and World Parade Books just published Desire in March 2008. Red Hen recently published Persephone.. Coatalism Press has just published 92 Rapple Drive and Drifting is online. Goose River Press published Nutley Pond. Finishing Line Press published Lost In The Fog October 2008. Clevis Hook published Light at the End, the Jesus poems. Presa Press published Lost Horses in 2009.For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com forthcoming in 2010 KATRINA from Poetic Matrix Press