On Hearing Someone Say in Their Guidelines
They Do Not Like My Now Famous Student
I think of the glitz
of her verbs, her
retinas and fibulae,
flashy as we both looked
onyx hair to our buns.
Her Janis Joplin poems
were blood and not just
bBrocades, delicate
as anemone and with
that touch, holding on
and gulping spasm.
Sisters or maybe
twins, a city thought.
“Are you trying to win
the Lyn Lifshin look
alike?” a lean man sneered
before she sprinted in
to her own light. Both
of us always trying
to pare away, get rid
of what we couldn’t
use: 3 lbs, advertising
men. Her eyes like a
sailor’s trapped in
the lamp of a witch,
stunned at what she’s
concocted.
For Years She Could Smell Them,
Feel Their Feathers
pale in the wet grass,
trembling like kittens,
as light twisted the
leaves jade. She says
it was like picking
plums or roses, she
held them fluttering
to her lips. For weeks
she slept with them in
her hair. They were so
still then. Her mother
kept washing her skin,
the bureau they nested
in. Stone and beaks,
the dead birds like
a secret sister waited
for her to come back
from school. She said
the trees sang to them
after midnight. Years
later, their crumbling
shapes in chiffon and
silk like wedding cake,
stale crumbs on satin.
Their feathers, a wish
in code in a diary left
in the rain the blue
leaks from into lilies
and arbutus. For years
the wood smelled
like them
She Said She Was 13, She Wanted To But Not With
The Boys In Her Town, The Ones Who Knew
Her Family And Who’d Tell If She Did
So Lisa and I, well we decided to go
to the stinky part of town where boys
in leather, even at 6 ft tall, hung
back on their heels and seemed
to coil like snakes into their boots
so they were looking up at us. I wanted
to know what it was like. They’d
whistle and leer, grunt something
lewd. One Saturday we took the subway
south to where these hoods whose
names we couldn’t even pronounce hung
out and I held my breath. We paired
up with the most dangerous looking
ones. They lived at home but made a
hangout in a vacant alley,
pulled quilts and plastic over the
bricks to keep out rain. I went
in one corner and just did it. It wasn’t
great, it wasn’t horrid, kind of like
eating a spicy sausage when you’ve
lived as a vegetarian. Then I found out
Lisa chickened out, told her guy she
was on the rag. We went home. I
washed my hair all month, took
extra baths. I kept thinking how
next time my guy said he wanted me
to howl, take off everything, not just
my pants. I begged my daughter to
wait until at least she was out of high
school and tho you laugh, she did. She
was in college and when she called to tell
me, I could have hugged her over to tell
me, I could have hugged her over the line,
as I wanted my mother to that rainy summer
afternoon, be there
to hold me.
She Said It Was Her Mother’s Breasts
Pendulous, drooping down over the flab
that bulged up out over the girdle
that left ridges on her flesh,
almost welts. She tried to
sleep leaning over the bed,
wanted her nipples tiny and
rose, her breasts aiming
at star light. Mothers
ought to keep their breasts
like secrets whispered around
the dining room table in another
language so children shouldn’t
hear. It was too hideous. Forget
the gore in fairy tales, the
lewdness of thighs opening
and hair dripping. What
stinks doesn’t just make a baby.
Don’t she snarls, her pen digging
into paper, worry about Fanny Hill or
The Story of O, nothing she
says is as scary as those breasts.
It’s like death, like those
uncles and aunts, who clucked
and raised eyebrows at the
table and shook their graying heads
“no,” bolting up from graves they are
almost in the same positions as they
were around the table sharing what
they’d kept from me before
I want to know
She Drove Her ’79 Chevy Pickup
west from Laguna Vista,
slithered its metal cheek
to cheek with a rusted
Ford truck but didn’t
get out, just lowered
the window, slow as an
eyelid. Her skin glowed
in the moon like a
Texas cheerleader named
Ivory Baby in 1976 but
her tongue didn’t stop
and her lips sucked him
dazed past the ripped
up fender. Later in the
town’s one bar he wondered
what there was to do in
these parts. Could give
you the lowdown she flicked
in his ears, got out her
keys 12 miles from there,
shoving him off her. She
slid out of her seat into
a circle of lowered lights.
A cat howled and she yelped
with it. Other women came,
their teeth gleaming like
knives leading a dark
animal. He thought he’d
leave, but she had the
keys, could barely get
the visor down between him
and the moaning when he
saw her take something
long and dripping toward
the v of her jeans
turning the blue purple,
staining herself as if
she’d given birth
from my book:
Before It's Light - Lyn Lifshin
$16.00 (1-57423-114-6/paper)
$27.50 (1-57423-115-4/cloth trade)
$35.00 (1-57423-116-2/signed cloth)
Black Sparrow Press
