SEPTEMBER 24
the cat cries for
food before it’s
light, still on
her own clock
crickets from the
barberry, joggers
with flash lights.
Impatience glows
wilder, their
last flare as red
creeps into maples.
The rose of sharon
flames. Clear sky,
a Sept 11 too too
blue. Is that why
I can’t stop shaking?
THOSE MORNINGS
my father up in blackness,
as alone in the kitchen
as anyone in a Hopper oil.
Chill Vermont September
air, a closet full of new
clothes I knew would never
look as good on me as on
the thin girls. When I stood
at the barre in ballet, my
plump thighs kissed
each other. “Fatty” burned
my face like “Kike.” Or
the horror when Mr Dewey
weighed each student,
blurted out the numbers,
the pounds thru 7th grade
To me, it was the way a
bad smell fills the room.
I might as well have been
naked in front of a sea
of thin strangers dragging
stained underwear
WHEN SHE HAD DREAMS
they were always
dark ones, the lost
ticket to the one
place to save her
life. Not monsters
but dreams of the
dead coming back
to life, a cat, one
infant she forgot,
abandoned. No
dream of flying for
her, no lover’s
hands up her thigh,
only the darkness
of beetles and
dry blood, what
light never gets to
THE THURSDAYS
the day Robert Senecal
turned me down for
the Junior Women’s
hayride I had to ask
Jerry Beecher instead.
Other years, that day—
it was a Thursday I
know it was when I
slammed my thumb
against the flowered
wall paper, broke it
on Valentine’s Day,
the cast bulky and
awkward as I was
sure I would always
be. My twenty year old
cat’s last good day
was a Thursday before
Winter Olympics,
February 2002, the
last night I could hold
her without pure dread
CUBES OF CALM
there were the nights
in the lost room
over Otter Falls
curled close to my
mother’s skin the
way now my cat
does. Radio voices
held us in the dark,
the water falls,
an ocean. Then there
were early mornings
in Maui drinking
coffee on the beach,
no one in sight, no
reading I had to
be up for. No call
yet that my mother
was worse. Now, any
morning I don’t wake
up, dread’s hand on
my neck, any day
when what might seem
ordinary, won’t
always be
Biography
If you
don't know Lyn Lifshin until now, you're a lucky reader. She has recently
released 92 Rapple Drive
(Coatlism Press 2008) which
may be her most autobiographical, intimate work. Lifshin may be the
best poet writing today in the English language. She has the title "Queen
of the Small Presses," but as her career continues to flourish
she's becoming Queen of All Presses. 92 Rapple Drive is captivating
not only because of the quality of her poetry, but also because of the
books narrative qualities. "I responded strongly to the narrative
element in these poems, the disjointed memoir of a woman who has seen
the wine bottle break on the wall and wonders if the stain will bleed
through, a woman who wants peace and a warm blanket by the fire, the
fingers of an imaginary lover, a cat purring softly in the corner; but
has felt the thistle in the garden and knows that the cat is already
diabetic, sick and facing that same challenge we all face as time speeds
up and we are whirled around the sun year after year in our living rooms
and yards."
