| Lyn is an accomplished poet, responsible for over 100 books, including Before It's Light. Winner of the Jack Kerouac Award, among others, she's been Poet In Residence at a few colleges, taught writing courses, and has been editor for four women writers anthologies. |
© Lyn Lifshin
NO
WONDER I WAS SO INTRIGUED BY THE ICE MAN
cold
as the others, but
unable
to leave, he
couldn't
pack a suit
case
of try to thumb
a
ride out of town like
my
father, pathetic,
by
the side of the
road
as the ex con
hitching
with broken
shoes
from the west,
Cold,
yes but given
the
right condition,
less
restless, less
changeable,
unable
to
leave for another
and
of course he
couldn't
e mail or
phone
so he didn't
keep
me waiting.
With
him it would
be
more exotic than
the
others yet, like a
pet
that's in a cage
or
wouldn't even
try
to get out, he'd
be
there in my house
just waiting for me
THINKING
OF PATRICK
How
could I not
with
one more ice
man
on my last
trip,
beads of
snow
I tried to
string
and wear
against
flames
skin.
You'd
think
I would
have
known by
now
how snow
men
can scorch
and
scar, men
whose
words
hypnotize,
whose
words
dart and
stab,
dip, ladders
of
snow you
suppose
you
can
climb, will
hold
you. It's
winter
in their
arms,
whether
that's
his name
or
not
GETTING
THE E MAIL
in
what would have
been
my father's 100th
birthday
or so. No one
really
was sure of the
date
and picked May
10th
because it was my
grandmother's
birthday,
I
get words when I stop
waiting
for them, words
from
a love I felt was
as
dead to me as my
father's
were, even
alive.
Dead as the plastic
leg
of the last man I felt
abandoned
by, dead
as
the oak leaves
ground
into earth or
the
one still hanging
on, as I was
SO
MANY YEARS AFTER WE EXCHANGE LETS SAY DNA
we
send out books
to
each other, the
verbs
flesh more
sex
in one page
than
in bed with
others.
My face
burns
as it did
wearing
his red
wool
sweater.
Later
he sent it
to
me smelled so
thick
of rose.
Years
later I
send
him piieces
of
the rug, gold
as
too wild light
where
we collapsed,
couldn't
wait for
the
bed and
finally
upstairs a
bottle
of wine. To
day
he wrote of
my
skin, cheetah
or
was it cougar body,
lean
long legs and
how
I had only
the
tiniest bikinis.
These
words move
under
my clothes,
under
still long hair,
this
foreplay electric,
makes
me long for
all
I was terrified
from
him and probably
would
be anywhere
but
here
I
WAS THINKING ABOUT THE POEM I CAN'T QUITE REMEMBER OR PUT MY HAND ON ABOUT THE
ONE EYED HORSE
and
I thought of you, a
one
legged man, riding
side
saddle on him. Of
course
it would matter
on
which side you sat,
if
you'd seen a flattened
world
with the horse or
saw
nothing. I think of
the
two of you, one side
pummeled
with sensations,
the
other floating in space,
a
perfect match, a neck
you
could hold on to to
not
slide off in the desert,
be
left without any support,
nothing
to stand on, just
waiting
for a way out as,
baby,
I did
All poems are copyrighted property of Lyn Lifshin.
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