Lyn Lifshin
Lyn's newest book is THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MY YEAR WITH RUFFIAN fromTexas Review Press .
She has over 100 books published & she has edited 4 anthologies. Her website: www.lynlifshin.com
Her last two Black Sparrow books, COLD COMFORT and BEFORE IT’S LIGHT won Paterson Review Awards and Black Sparrow at David Godine will publish ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME
SOME DAYS
I can’t stand how ballet
is addictive as some
lovers. It’s the red
shoes in the blood,
you know that obsession.
How even pain won’t
let you walk away.
What’s rubbed raw as
where a lover’s pulled
from so fast there should
be skid marks, never
has a chance to become
tough or heal. You’re
worn out. It’s the same
thing over and over. I open
my legs like a wish bone,
bend backward more
than I can without
cracking. For a once
chubby pre teen, ballet is
a demon lover, taunting,
demanding, an agony it’s
impossible to resist.
Who can be cautious,
go easy I sigh, pulling on
tights the way I would
a man who I know
in the end will leave me
broken, but for a little
while makes me so high
DO I HAVE TO REALLY WRITE ABOUT WHAT SEEMS MOST SCARY?
Isn’t it enough I’ve fought against
it, ballet classes every day,
often more than one. Do I have
to tell you I was stunned by the
letter from a woman who says “now
in the gym the men stop looking.”
Do I have to joke “pull the plug if
I can’t do ballet,” laugh when a
friend says “ I didn’t sleep with him
because I’d have to get undressed.”
Do I have to remember my mother
saying she’d rather be dead than
lose her teeth? Have to know if I
stay slim, size zero in ultra sexy
Victor’s Secret jeans without
more fat my face will look less
lovely. I think of that friend who
says she doesn’t worry about what
poem she’ll read but what she
will wear. Another says she wants
plastic surgery but doesn’t think
it’s right for someone in the arts,
shouldn’t she care about loftier things?
I think of another woman who will
only be photographed in certain
positions. Do I have to tell you what
I’m thinking about isn’t death?
THE OTHER NIGHT I HAD THIS ABSURD DREAM
terrorism was going on but it was
in only parts of the city. Some
were gunned down but others
seemed to make it to somewhere
else. I was in spike heels, a filmy
dress, chartreuse I think, the
color Nicole Kidman wore several
years ago to the Oscars. Suddenly
a dark man puts his arm around
me like a shawl and says its
the blacks and Jews they are after.
Ambulances across the pond and the
rain seemed like bullets. I wait for
guns from the street, something
terrifying as what catapulted Jessica
from her seat in the Campus Theater
when The Thing played. It comes
thru the blinds, pulls me from quilts
even the cat is hiding under. I can feel
what is just waiting for me slither
toward the bed, even the cat smells it,
leaps from her warm cove. It’s too
late to fall back to sleep. This terror will
wrap itself around me, weave itself in
to my hair so when I go to ballet it
it will keep me will keep me
leaping and turning. I will be as not
there as an old lover’s voice on his
answering machine I called months ago
to just listen to or feel safe I could
not still want him
