SUDDENLY IT’S WHAT I THINK OF

trying to pull some
memory of him back.
Suede, maybe corduroy,
Was he nice to my cat?
He must have been but
I don’t remember. No
Abys then, but tiger
cat, the grey cat, brown
one, her kittens. I’m
only sure because
of photographs, one in
each hand. A smile
camouflages what I felt,
Then, out of fantasy,
he wrote he saw my
picture in a magazine,
said he wanted to
take me down
the Mississippi
hollering poems and
blowing weed. He
sounded crazy and I
was bored, living, a
married virgin in a
raised ranch for years.
That his eyes were
green, I didn’t remember.
Someone wrote to
tell me. Except for
what I wrote about him
so little seems real

by Lyn Lifshin