DOWNTOWN ALBANY, THE DARKBLUE WIND STREETS

by Lyn Lifshin

Blue wind

whips around

Belardo’s.

Melville lived in

this place once.

Now, it’s a

greasy bar. A

fat woman with stringy

hair screams

lousy, lousy

Blood spurts from

somebody’s mouth.

It’s still on the

floor when

we leave.

Yellow snow.

Dove St, Providence.

The names of the

streets nothing

like them

*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

THE FIRST WEEK AT THE ARTIST’S RETREAT

When I went to

type rain fills the

morning

it came out

pain

You would have liked, you

always saw things

as unfolding (said you

never knew past the

next plane

ticket where

I’ve been living in a house

with paper partitions,

like in Japan, keeping

everyone separate

But I didn’t know that

when I started this poem

*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

AMTRAK SOUTH

by Lyn Lifshin

slithers past
the backs of houses.
One’s boarded up,
glass maybe some
body threw a chair
through. Blue
Buick, a Why Pay
More billboard.
Grey air. Rusty
cars. Erie Lackawanna,
a blood slash in
mist as we move
past cat tails.
Nothing’s green
yet. Piled rail
ties. West of Albany,
Rennsalear where we
stop, change engines
as the grey goes to
grey green light
over the Hudson.
Days like this
I hate George
Bush, in white paint
on a metal rain
pigeons swoop from
to discarded plastic,
to dark bags of
garbage near where
a woman on the platform
dangles a cigarette
from her blood lips


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

BOOTS LIKE LOVE

by Lyn Lifshin

I remember those first ones,
tall and dark, you know the
kind. My o la la boots one
teacher said. One cat wanted
to make them his own. I’ve
had so many since then:
spike heel boots I could
never run from danger in,
platform boots that made my
legs seem twice as tall as they
are. One TV producer asked
me to pull them out from
under the bed since I talked
about boots in another
poem (and tho I’ve also
talked of men, that wasn’t
possible naturally). Some
boots have snagged favorite
dresses, torn velvet like
men but in them, I feel I can
have any man, that they will
all imagine me with them
in only these boots


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

THE PHOTOGRAPH, COVE POINT

by Lyn Lifshin

one e mail suddenly with
its vintage camp, ramshackle
hall. You can only read some
of the signs like BEER,
DANCING. Only a few cars
and the lake behind it. “I
was googling Cove Point,
someone e mails me, and
I found your poem.” He’s got
a Lake Dunmore address.
The lake so braided with
all my summers. My mother
making salmon croquettes for
picnics when the store closed
and me in my bath suit posed
like a pin up near Branbury
Beach when, though I didn’t
know it, couldn’t believe
it, my body was beautiful. The
bathing suit, light blue with
a tiny skirt maybe still in a
drawer in another house.
July nights, square dancing
at Cove Point, Pinkie Lee
and his Mocking Bird song
with it’s “kiss her in the
center if you dare.” Maybe
this man who’s written
me asked me to dance once
before flames licked the
old rafters. Now there isn’t
a clue. Lake grass reclaimed
all traces of the foundation.
But I remember on the last
night before he went to Cuba,
the first boy with licorice
eyes and mahogany hair,
a prototype for all the other
tall dark men I’d look and
long for, held me in the
parked car, put his hand where
no one else had yet, promising
love tho it would be the
next to last time I saw him


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

CUNT

by Lyn Lifshin

a little cave to explore
you come out happier
for having been there

with its beard around
the words you’ve been

wanting, a flower, rose
petals opening, hallway
you didn’t know had so

many different rooms,
all of them welcoming

you, a glove saying
very glad and shaking

sweet apricot half
with a moist place
for your tongue

a furry mouth with
its own tongue

space there’s
always more room
in as it gets
more crowded


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

“NOSTALGIC MENENTOS”

on the side of the box.
Letters from my mother
in college, room assignments
for Syracuse U. Someone
sprinkled baby talc powder
on the box. Musty files,
A letter from a Carl I
no longer remember, the
ink blurred: "Shaw 5th
floor," UVM Kake Walk
magazine before it was
not pc, Feb 16,17, 18.
Those handsome men
probably white and bent.
Xerox copy of a script
spelled wrong, "Rosalin,
Litman then a photo
of me in the green dress
I wore. Measles couldn’t
stop me. I was Vivian
Whitehouse, attractive
young girl about 24.
I probably was though
younger, with no idea I was
pretty. That part, after
I lost others to Carolyn
Morin who went on to have
an affair with Joe DiMaggio
who came to Middlebury
to make Carolyn’s mother
too until Mr. Morin went
after him with a shot gun.
The pale ink of the script
fading, crumbling like
those days, blurred as the
handwritten notes under
the powder, messy
as the past

by Lyn Lifshin


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

MID SUMMER NIGHT

by Lyn Lifshin

the moon’s face
almost full
slivering between
clouds. Stars
dissolve. A single
firefly. In this
pale light,
as with you,
what is blurs. I
can’t make out
outlines of
tiger lilies
opening, onyx
spots startling as
your black eyes,
a thick musk
in blackness crowds
the fence past
the rose
dogwood balls


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

AUGUST, THEN AFTER

by Lyn Lifshin

I light a candle for
my mother in the
house I’m rarely
in, can see her
lighting one in
the same room
for her mother.
In Vermont, the
geese were already
flying. Skies of
small blackbirds
like tossed coals,
The dark moss
on her stone. So
much in my rear view
mirror now that she
isn’t eclipsed
other pain. Never
mind what I said
before. When I walked
into the room, just
a glance took
my breath

WRITING CLASS, SYRACUSE WINTER

by Lyn Lifshin

write, he said looking
like an even craggier
Lincoln, your impressions
the next 4 days, details
of a walk across campus.
Even now I remember I
wore a strawberry wool
skirt, matching sweater.
There was bittersweet
near the Hall of Language.
I curled in a window
ledge of a cave in Crouse,
an organ drifting thru
smooth warm wood. I
could let the wine
dark light hold me, slid
on the ice behind where a
man with a blue mole
picked me up, my notes
scattering up Comstock.
Torn tights, knees snow
kissed the skin off. I was
hypnotized by that
huge growth, said yes
tho I only half remembered.
Upstairs icicles clotted,
wrapped glass in gauze.
There must have been some
one who didn’t call. Blue
walls, ugly green bedspread,
Dorothy popping gum, eating
half a tuna sandwich before
we’d lie in bed with the
lights out wondering what
it would be like to have
Dr Fox with his red beard
go down on us as we
braided and rubbed our
mahogany hair dry and I
tried to figure out what to
do with the bittersweet,
torn knees, ragged maples,
didn’t believe I’d ever
have anything to write about


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

LYING OUT IN THE FIELDS WHERE THERE’D BE WILD STRAWBERRIES

by Lyn Lifshin

only the leaves
that March afternoon,
the sun a glow we
hardly saw the months
of snow. We lay on
our backs. No, I told
my mother later,
the ground was dry.
Birds all around,
dandelions we opened
already the palest
color of sun. My green
parka on the lush
green hill, our eyes
closed, smelling
the smell of things
growing: hair, summer
and tho by mid afternoon,
we’d shiver in the shade,
our skin stayed pink,
sun kissed this early


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

NIGHTS IT WAS TOO HOT TO STAY IN THE APARTMENT

by Lyn Lifshin

We drove to the lake, then stopped
at my grandmother’s. The grownups
sat in the screened porch on wicker
or the glider whispering above the
clink of ice in wet glass. Spirea and
yellow roses circled the earth under
stars. A silver apple moon. Bored
and still sweaty, my sister and I
wanted to sleep out on the lawn
and dragged out our uncle’s army
blankets and chairs for a tent. We
wanted the stars on our skin, the
small green apples to hang over
the blanket to protect us from bats.
From the straw mats, peonies glowed
like planets and if there was a breeze,
it was roses and sweat. I wanted
our white cats under the olive green
with us, their tongues snapping up
moths and whatever buzzed thru the
clover. For an hour the porch
seemed miles away until itchy with
bug bites and feeling our shirts fill
with night air, my hair grow curlier,
our mother came to fold up the blankets
and chairs and I wished I was old
enough to stay alone until dawn or
small enough to be scooped up, asleep
in arms that would carry me up the
still hot apartment stairs and into
sheets I wouldn’t know were still
warm until morning

PAST THE ABANDONED RAILROAD

where boys tried to lean
into a nipple if you walked
thru the thick wet leaves
of Frog Alley where tourists
sip cappuccino on the wrought
iron chairs. When, finally,
someone asked me to dance
he tried to put his tongue
in deep, his fingers past my blue
dress dotted with rhinestones
near where we bowled on New
Year's Eve and Sylvia, the tall
elegant woman told me later
I had lovely skin. From the
bridge at Otter Creek, the old
marble mill grew rivulets
of ice, like bars, as if to cage
the cold, the frozen spiders.
Someone buried marbles
ground to dust past the college
spires, the last thing the girl
with a baby growing in
her saw flashing by as she
jumped into the whirlpool’s
icy logs. Some nights I
was sure I could hear her
moaning as the falls crashed,
spit ice up to Main Street
and I ran, as if the crush of
cold froth was a lure

by Lyn Lifshin


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

TONGUE

by Lyn Lifshin

she never told me not to let any
one inside, or that I, like women
in Tibet, who once stuck theirs
out as a greeting for others,
should learn to keep it inside,
sheltered. But the idea of
putting a man inside my
mouth, close to my tongue,

was more than she could
stomach. My mother, who let
me read Snows of Kilimanjaro
when my friend’s mother would
not, wasn’t a prude, but thought
that keeping as much from a man
would just make him want you.
Licking chocolate was one

thing, but to put something you
didn’t know where it had been
in your mouth, that was too much.
We had tongue for dinner, that
huge blubbery shape much bigger
than any penis. In her last weeks
my mother craved tongue, not fat,
not too lean but thinly sliced. In our
house, we never held our tongues:
words were razors: slut, liar,
vicious, stupid, were hurled
down the hall like fists or straps.
My mother and I battled, it was
as if we had a body of tongues
stuck out at each other until any
place on our bodies was a mouth

so sore nothing could save us
but to stop each other’s mouth
with a long kiss

IN MIDDLEBURY, THE BEE MAN DIES

on the same street my mother
tried to walk to to rescue her
dog, his papers in a small box
of what mattered most in the
back of the closet with pale
blue letters written in small
handwriting with almost as
pale blue ink. In a small town
you can walk almost any
where but my mother was 9
and her socks drooped around
her ankles, rubbed skin raw.
Later, again in the town she
never wanted to move back
to, we lived a street away.
Maybe she wanted to be close
to the last place she held that
small part Spitz mongrel
who limped with her on three
legs, was more loyal than
most husbands. We heard
horses some nights in the
wind, could smell honey and
clover. The vet’s brother
worked in the store, limped
from a war injury and kept a
flask near the cash register
but nobody would fire him,
treated him like someone
in the family. Tho my mother
and father fought in the stucco
house, the Emilo house and
finally in the apartment, some
late June nights we drifted in
long amber light up that street
past the sound of the dogs,
like wind chimes. My father
whistled and my mother hummed
along, held a bottle or new
honey and for once, nobody
was about to spoil any night
washed with such sweetness

by Lyn Lifshin


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

MIDDLEBURY BEE MAN DIES

as the geese start to leave,
orchards sagging. The
wind near our old stucco
house two streets away,
steaming with apples.
The bees go on, the
geese remember iced
ponds. When I slept in
the top room with grey
painted boards I heard
horses, could smell
honey in the clover wind
as the bee man walked
thru the hives, bees on
his fingers, the moon’s
lemon light on their wings

by Lyn Lifshin

ON MY MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY

by Lyn Lifshin

I want to go back
while there’s time,
these days blazing
fires under my
hair. Counting
down to this day,
remembering the
last day, what hospice
nurses said would
blur but hasn’t,
doesn’t mean I
can’t make a home
in the ghost light.
The mints in her
pocket book still,
the bag in the house
I still go to where
we’d spread out on
my bed, giggling
over boys she wanted
to want me but not
have me care
too much


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

THE MAD GIRL CAN’T BELIEVE SHE EVER WAS SOMEONE WHO HAD AN EX CON POET LOVER LIVING IN THE TREES BEHIND HER HOUSE

if it wasn’t for the sketches
deep behind sand, the letter
he wrote about stealing wine
cooling on a back porch
and how excited he was
to have so many fine books
to read sleeping under
red poppies and ferns. Some
one else must have spread
her legs, opened herself
in ways she’d only imagined.
Who was that in clothes
that looked like hers
leaving language on a
tree, lasagna under the
window when her mother
came to town and she
couldn’t let him in the
house as normally she
would after her husband
pulled out for work in
that green Austin Healey.
The mad girl doesn’t
think she ever would gulp
nutmeg that kept her in
a terrifying blur. It’s
the way she feels often
these days but now she
doesn’t care about any
body touching her. She
remembers at a president
rally this man in the woods
said he watched her
and thought that gorgeous
ass belongs to me. Now
she’s pretty, tiny, still
has good legs but to try to
imagine wrapped them
around anyone, anything
that could be so dangerous
seems nearly impossible
tho she has

by Lyn Lifshin


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

WHEN I GET HER LETTER

by Lyn Lifshin

wood smoke, orange
poppies and nights on
the bed where sea blown
drapes kissed bare legs.
A true initiation
before the husband
drove home. This man,
an ex-con, alkie, witty
but not as witty as he
thought. The first time
anyone put a tongue
there and there. Of
course I couldn’t keep
him. He was too big
to have in the house.
How like Rashomon
the women’s letters
about him, the woman
he took along for the
dark forever house.
Then the woman he
married. Her letters,
the suicide car plowing
into a school bus
haunt. I still have keys
for the cottage in
tangled vines. He taught
me what men did in
prison. When he was
late I was sure I’d find
his body in the leaves.
Nights around 9, he
lit a match under the
window, and I flashed
the lights. He was like
fireflies you reach
for in the dark,
are gone with the light


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

I REMEMBER HAIFA BEING LOVELY BUT

there were snakes in the
tent. My mother was
strong but she never
slept, was afraid of
dreaming. In Auschwitz
there was a numbness,
lull of just staying
alive. Her two babies
gassed before her, Dr.
Mengele, you know who
he is? She kept her
young sister alive
only to have her die
in her arms the night
of liberation. My mother
is big boned, but she
weighed under 70 lbs.
It was hot, I thought
the snakes lovely. No
drugs in Israel, no
food. I got pneumonia,
my mother knocked the
doctor to the floor
when they refused,
said I lost two in
the camp and if this
one dies I’ll kill
myself in front of
you. I thought that
once you became a
mother, blue numbers
appeared, mysteriously,
tattooed on your arm

by Lyn Lifshin


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm