Month: December 2012

IT’S THE ELBOW, THE HAND

 

MacDowell Colony, a spring

with the lilacs, divorce in the

just blooming rose air. “It’s

the elbow” a composer said,

that’s how you tell age. And

the hands.” Others supposed

I was in my twenties. A dating

service low on young women

asked if I’d let them say I was

22 they would pay me. But

this man said “Lyn, your

hands, I can tell you’re not

19.” Horrified, I spit out,

“scars, poison ivy, I covered

them with lotion, I burned

them.” He just shook his head.

Now I wear long sleeves,

fish net to show a little skin

but not enough so you’d

notice my elbows, my arms. I

buy shrug after shrug, sheer

dance jerseys, am glad I am

usually cold, that the ballroom

studio is freezing. Tonight in

a sweltering ballet class, all the

young girls in skimpy camisoles,

their arms taut and lovely 19,

20, maybe 22, I check  their

elbows, how the skin near the

armpits on some already show

where they will sag. The lucky

ones have Michelle Obama’s

but even some of the babies are

feeling earth’s mouths on them.

You have to look carefully

to notice. Their elbows still pretty

smooth, unwrinkled, mine

camouflaged in torn leotards

with the crotch cut out for a

top I hope looks a little like

skin. I checkout what positions

flatter, which disclose what

isn’t so nice, try on my 16^th

birthday party sleeveless

rose dress. It’s held up

well, considering but I don’t

think of, can’t imagine

what’s ahead

 

Home

REMEMBERING LATER IT’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF WHEN MY MOTHER AND FATHER ELOPED

 

now dust under

the same maple

years after they

didn’t talk. Too

dazed to notice

it’s July, June’s

gulped. That

night in Vermont,

her suitcase with

a camisole she

bought for another

man who would

threaten suicide

hearing of my

other’s sudden

move. Letters on

palest blue paper

with blue ink, how

in his grief he

fell off a hay wagon

and, if not death,

he’d escape to

Paraguay. His blue

blues colors my

mother’s life

long after her

rash move

 

Home

IT’S BEEN SO LONG

since I’ve dreamed
anything that was
not nightmare

This spring
with goslings in
the roses, tulips

and crocuses pushing
color thru crystal
ice, I hardly

notice the wood
ducks. I don’t hear
geese in flight.

I used to dream
goose music, scan
black ripples

walking back
from the pond.
Before I photographed

the last light
glowing in dark
woods

the sun gulped.
Just one tree
on fire as

if glowing
from within

 

 

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Lyn ‘s Website

Lyn Lifshin has written more than 125 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A, and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library.

 

 

NOT LIKE THE STORY

of the woman obsessed

with my first lover

wrote me. (Another

story there’s still a lot

to mine) of a man

who could make his

lover have an orgasm

by command, at a

distance maybe over

the phone or mail.

I don’t think they

had texting or Face

book or  mail. (And

of course I don’t

know if it was his words

or something she did)

Still when I got your

email, when after

the fantasy that didn’t

happen and the terror

it could, terror it

wouldn’t, your “indeed,

why didn’t,” something

in me that wasn’t alive

became alive as if

skin touched me

 

 

Home

ONE MORE NIGHT

of no sleep.
The house creaks,
cat breath. Some
one who seems
an intruder in the
other room. After
email, smoldering,
cryptic enough
where anything
could have been
imagined, what
burned turned to
ice. Hot Austin
nights and then the
months of even
in Paris going over
your fingers that
never moved close
as in dreams.
Cold lips. I checked
e mail in terror
and only when I
stopped caring, a
blue plum card,
his “all of the
missing,” how he
looked for me in San
Antonio and even
across the table in
Austin and then
the bolt: “indeed,
why didn’t we?”

 

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