The Margaritas were blue with paper roses.
Later I thought how they were the only salt of those nights.
His e mail letters like skin,
very taut. What he didn't say drugged me.
Language was wild, intense.
I could feel him, his screen name a tongue.
Verbs taut, what he didn't say a drug.
It was a dangerous tango.
I wanted his body glued to mine.
Distance kept the electricity vivid.
It was a dangerous tango.
How could I know his mother leaped into Niagara Falls.
I fell for his words, what he left out.
How could I know he was ice.
How could I know his mother leaped into the falls.
Even in the heat, he was icy.
His name was Snow. Our last night
we drove thru fog until 3.
He told me things he said he'd never told anyone.
My thigh burned where it touched him.
On our last night we drove thru Austin
mist talking. I was burning.
He photographed me, exhausted, at 3 AM. Everything he
told me was a scar. My hair curled in a way
I hated. After that night I wasn't sure
I would be pretty again.
Everything he told me was a
scar. Under the ice the anger in him was lava.
I wanted him, always longing for men
with something missing.
The Margaritas were the only salt I'd taste.
The anger in him was lava under the ice.
I wanted more, my longing a scar.
When he didn't write, I printed his old e mail.
When I no longer looked for it
his e mail was there, like a mugger.
The Margaritas were strong with black paper roses
a much more rare obsession than mine, tho
in some ways, not that different. The woman
in love with what's dead, what's given up
on breathing, caring, could be me knocking
my knuckles raw on your metal door while
you gulp another beer, put your head down
on the table. With you, it often was like
singing to someone in a casket the lid was
already down on, still expecting something.
She buried animals in the woods, didn't mind
touching them. Though I made our nights into
something more, I could have been coiled
close to a corpse. No, that part is a lie. Your
body was still warm. It was everything inside
where you heart must have been that was
rigid, ice. The woman in the film went to work,
an embalming assistant. Isn't that what I'm
doing? Keeping you with words? Embracing
you on the sheet of this paper, a tentative
kiss on cold lips, the cuddling of cadavers?
In the film, the woman says loving the dead is
"like looking into the sun without going blind,
is like diving into a lake, sudden cold, then
silence." She says it was addictive. I know about
the cold and quiet afterward, how you were a drug.
If she was spellbound by the dead, who
would say I wasn't, trying to revive, resuscitate
someone not alive who couldn't feel or care
with only the shell of the body. Here, where no
body can see, I could be licking your dead body
driving thru a car wash. I could be whispering
to the man across the aisle, "bodies are addictive."
Our word for the loved and the dead are the same,
the beloved, and once you had either while you
have them, you don't need any other living people
in your life
He saw my
picture in a
magazine and told
me he wanted
to take me down
the Mississippi
hollering poems and
blowing weed, he
sounded crazy
and I wrote that I'd
never been
beaten, that I was
a bitch
He sent me
pain and lust
for 19 days, his
aloneness, how he
wanted to fall
into blue water.
he said my letters
fell apart
pressed to his
skin. In March
my arms started
melting and
I drank the
Chateau Ausone
he sent, by April
my face was
burning. He sent
me his so that in
Concord I could
just think about
him while the
river was
swelling
But I didn't
think he'd
come, writing back
checks, stealing
hamburg, staggering
with a torn suitcase and broken
shoes from California.
I didn't know where
to keep him
and I got drunk on
cognac before he
fell thru the
door
He taught me
what men did in
prison. His
eyes weren't mean
and blue when he said how
we would live in a
house of shells in
the ferns in
Big Sur
high on poems
he said we'd eat the
colors off Point
Lobos, dark
wine and succulents in
bed. I could
hear the
seals afternoons
we lay in a blur
of nutmeg
watching the curtains
his head on my
belly telling me about
women who
stopped mattering
that's when it
started getting
scary. One
waited five years after
getting a short
letter
I wouldn't even
take the bus
across town
tho I dreamed I'd go
with him
to Yugoslavia
and Mexico
he kept getting busted
and moved under the
stairs with
dead moths
drinking beer
and not coughing
Then he moved
out into
the trees
came leaf by
leaf in the morning
fog was what we
needed, a blur to
lie down and
lie in. I
never liked his
poems as
much as I
pretended, not
even the ones
he stole
but I loved the
stories, how he
made love in
coffins, stood
on the roof of his
house screaming
at stars
But he kept
breaking into
places. Once
I held him 4 hours while
he cried
Next morning he poured chocolate
on my lips
and ate it and
talked about
going to Montana
we could live in a
wooden hut in
Canada with my cats
only nothing was
getting better
he vomited blood
and black things
If he came in
late I thought
it was over
He'd just laugh
We'd take a bottle
out into the
huge weeds
and collapse
laughing
other things fell
too, leaves
he'd slam into
chairs with
cigarettes, burn
holes in everything
I set the clock
ahead, wondered
how long this could
go on, the snow
coming and I
watered the mail
when he went to
get better
and didn't
by October I
couldn't move
whenever I went
there were
tentacles, his
eyes in the
window
I tripped on his
arms and then
cut out for Colorado
he couldn't just
stay in the
leaves, children
said he smelled
like fire
ladybugs lie on
their backs now the
wind is rising
I'm not
sorry that he
came
or that nothing
could keep him
Lyn Lifshin has published more than 120 books of poetry and edited four anthologies of women's writing. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, available from Women Make Movies. Her most recent books include Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness from Texas Review Press; Persephone from Red Hen; New World Press published Desire and just published All the Poets (Mostly) Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead; and All True, Especially the Lies and Tsunami as History from PoetryRepairs.com. New York Quarterly books will publish A Girl Goes into the Woods in 2012. Two new books appeared in July 2012: For the Roses: poems for Joni Mitchell from March Street Press and Knife Edge & Absinthe, the tango poems from Night Ballet Press. Her web site is www.LynLifshin.com.
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