you catch a whiff
of rose and our knees crumble
I’d like to say it took one night for
you to call but it’s been years
You did the work, making me
up as you wanted. Then, you said
I whined. I drank too much.
You’ve even got the color
of my dress wrong: I never
wear orange. But if it pleases you,
I’ll play along like any woman
faking orgasm. You think my
cheetah thighs, yours then,
were the silkiest, my mouth a
national treasure. There was
danger you write, my high heels
so close to your face.
So what if I was in ballet
shoes or sandals. (I’ll
go along, knowing
the farther I get from you
in time the more
you want me
I’ve kept them, like
men on ice I want
there, close enough
to dangle. If you
think my legs are
hot now, you should
have seen them before
ballet slit my tendons
like that lover who
cut his woman’s
Achilles’ deep so she
couldn’t run off. It
took me years to
love them unlike too
many men but you
won’t see them
except thru black lace.
My mother wore spikes
into her 70's. I’m
surprised she didn’t
want them in her
grave. If I wear them
again, I’ll be the
one walking where I
want to fast, walking a
way from lovers with
tongues sure they
are my oxygen
tube if I wear them
On the metro, two women
plainer than I was
stun in 3 or 4 inch spikes.
One’s dark, a beauty.
Before I bleached my hair
we could have been sisters,
maybe twins. I wonder
if she’s in love or imagining
she is in this city of so
many young girls. Maybe
she loved and lost and
is starting clean, a Frida
Kahlo sadness in her eyes.
Dark haunting girls
turn up dead in this city.
She gets off where I
went to dance this morning
as if to sweat loss out.
She’s too well dressed for
a dancer who would dance till
her feet bruise, till her
heart’s numb, until there
is no way in hell she could
wear such elegant
high heels
Lyn Lifshin’s recent prizewinning book, Before It’s Light, was published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. Another Woman Who Looks Like Me will be published by Black Sparrow-David Godine in September 2004. 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. She is working on a collection of poems about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian. For more information, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com.