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it was never a
quiet Sunday afternoon,
never calm as sky
on an empty bed light
falls under near
windows you
could smell the
sea from. Nothing
simple as a
child riding her
bike up a dirt road,
no field with
new foals, nothing
still and peaceful as a
summer glider,
cats sleeping on
green that
moves slowly in
a lilac wind
I could curl in
blankets, listen
to frost creak
in trees. The pines
and juniper a
wreathe around
our breath. What
ever I didn't
know what to
do with capped
in snow. Your
arms, a field
blue water
danced in under
shifting ice.
it was the stories, the
ones you told on air,
I stole them for poems.
You loved it. A limb
lost in 'Nam, a fake
one that shattered
New Year's Eve and
since no one was open,
you screwed and glued
the pieces together
after chasing parts
down the hill. Nothing
wasn't electric. My
poems flicked their
hips, inviting as
a blue bikini I never
wear now. I taped your
midnight to dawn
voice, the stories but
it was the sound
of you, your voice
that put its skin
around me. I knew
that wouldn't
be enough. Our
words lips, tongues,
each verb a finger.
Words bloomed
in the sheets, on air,
rarely on the phone.
We never knew
how to say goodbye.
Lyn Lifshin's Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was published by Black Sparrow in 2006 and selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Also out in 2006 was The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian from Texas Review Press. Lifshin's recent books include Before It's Light (Black Sparrow, 2000), Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow, 1997), In Mirrors (Presa Press), Upstate: An Unfinished Story (Foot Hills) and The Daughter I Don't Have (Plan B Press). Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of a film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, from Women Make Movies. Her web site is www.lynlifshin.com.