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Poems
by Lyn
Lifshin
Drifting
things
I have and
don’t
have
come
from this
moving
between
people
like
smoke.
I’ve been
waiting
the way
milkweed
I
brought
inside two
years
ago stays
suspended,
hair in the
wind
it seems to
float,
even its
black
seeds don’t
pull
it down
tho
you don’t under
stand
how any
thing
could stay
that
way
so
long
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Why
Areograms Are Always Blue
Because
of the distance to you.
Because
the wind fades,
dries
out the verbs
until
the background they’ve
leaned
against blends
with
the sky.
The
blue reflects your eyes.
No,
that’s a lie, I don’t
remember
them, only the
feeling
in my hands, some
thing
longing, aching the
blue
in my veins a fast
blue
burning barriers
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Not
Quite Spring
Baby,
you know I get high
on
you, come back with me
whispering
in her ear.
It
was all she could do to say
no,
spring leaves budding,
his
hand on her breast,
crocus
smell and
everything
unfolding.
She
gasping I
want, I
would
but
instead hurrying
back
to the windowless room
where
she locks the heavy door.
Lemons
are rotting on her pillow,
she
studies her nipples,
nyloned
crotch in mirror
then
hugs her huge body to sleep
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Cat
Callahan
being
fat until
that
spring, I still
felt
fat on Main St
in
my town but
not
when the science
fair
went north,
Burlington
for 3 days,
I
met the kind of
long
haired boy I
hadn’t.
The photograph
with
my eyes huge,
how
the cop downstairs
groaned
when he screamed
in
with that Ford.
Relatives
squirmed at
his
name. By June I
unbuttoned
my sweater,
wriggling
in a back
seat
near Champlain
Al
Martino’s Oh
My Love
I’ve
hungered for so,
the
pink check dress
wrinkling
a long time
as
things inside
unchained
were saying
yes,
yes tho
I didn’t
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Fitzi
in the Yearbook
grin
muffled but
sneaky,
slithering
out
like his penis
did
in the Drive In
a
June before I could
imagine
anything so
slippery
sliding up,
let
alone inside
me
after months of
Saturdays
in my
mother’s
grey apartment,
my
sister giggling
behind
the couch,
a
tongue pressing
between
lips should
have
been a warning in
the
blue Chevy I felt
he
was all whale
crashing
with his
now
you’ve done
this
to me, you have
to,
everything
in
me
sand he
collapsed
on
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In
Spite of His Dangling Pronoun
He
was really her favorite
student,
dark and just
back
from the army with
hot
olive eyes, telling her of
bars
and the first
time
he got a piece of
ass
in Greece or was it
Italy
and drunk on some strange
wine
and she thought
in
spite of his dangling
pronoun
(being twenty four and
never
screwed but in her
soft
nougat thighs) that he
would
be a
lovely
experience.
So
she shaved her legs up high
and
when he came
talking
of foot notes she
locked
him tight in her
snug
black file cabinet where
she
fed him twice a day and
hardly
anyone noticed
how
they lived among bluebooks
in
the windowless office
rarely
coming up for sun or the
change
in his pronoun. Or the
rusty
creaking chair
or
that many years later
they
were still going to town in
novels
she never had time to finish
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Eating
the Rain Up
grey
Tuesday
rain
all night
You
said do you
want
to go
for
cigarettes
do
you want to
listen
I’ve
got a
got
a room we
could
I’ve
got something I want
you
at
least
we
could
talk
tell
me your name
Books
fell across the bed
Your
mustache
was
the kind, I
wrapped
your mouth
into
me
yes
I knew
your
thighs would be
friendly,
your
hair
closing
down
small
hands a pillow
and
the
wetness
we grasped,
that
warm together
ate
the rain up
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Lemon
Sun, Satuday
wind
chimes
Jenny’s
slightly sour
sheets
the
few white hairs on
your
chest
I’m
sorry I couldn’t
forget
and
swing, but my eyes
were
burning
lying
now, this mattress
in
your old friends’ house
lemon
sun, Billy’s
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Tennesse
Blues
thru
the shade. He’s been
playing
since midnight
Jenny
standing in the
door,
parting the
curtains
slowly
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Light
from This Turning
I
have lost touch with
distant
trees,
the
wind you brought
in
your hair
and
lilac hills.
Something
different
bites
into the river
and
the river of lost days
floats
over my tongue.
Love,
you are like that
distant
water, pulling
and
twisting,
you
turn me
apart
from myself
like
some frightening road,
something
I don’t want
to
know
Still,
let my
hair
float slow through
this
new color,
let
my eyes absorb
all
light
from
this turning
that
has brought us
here,
has carried us
to
where we are,
we
are
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On
Another Coast
Maybe
could
it have
been
because of
rain
that we fell
together
so
easily
that first time
rain
keeping the
others
near the
fire
your hair was
blacker
than the melon
seeds
under the straw the towels
smelling
of sweet trees our
bodies
lifted to each other in the
rain
cottage the
wet
leaves pulling us
close
and down
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All
Afternoon We
read
Lorca
by
five snow
blurred
the
glass.
February. I
leaned
against
those
chill panes.
Gypsies
burned
through the
snow
with apples
You
in the
other
room
I
was thinking
don’t
let
this
be some
warmth
I can
move
near
and
never know
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Lemon
Wind
all
day
nobody
wanted
to
talk
the
sleeping bags
were
still wet
from
the storm
in
Cholla Vista
Nothing
went right.
But
later the
wood
we
burned
had a sweet
unfamiliar
smell
and
all night
we
could taste
lemons
in the wind
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