First day the buds
begin to swell. No
matter tomorrow the
mercury will drop.
The birds were on
the maple early. I
want the body’s drug,
not under another
body but narcotized
by music in a minor
key to roll and shimmy.
I want coins on my
lavender skirt to
catch ever last bit of
light they can suck up,
wildness pulsing, the
tremors, the snaky
undulation, belly and
hips with their own
life. Quiver of fire. Me
and not me, always
something veiled
until we die I tell her.
Guess what, there was a
woman who always wore
lilac, came to class a
week before. Why be a
foot for love when you
can be a dancing foot. I
Want to die in ballet shoes
not boots tho I dream of
riding into the wind on
the blackest filly. If I played
blues fiddle, my fingers
would bleed for the horses
I won’t ride, the dancer
I could never have been. But
in some mirrors I can be
more than one woman, more
than the one with words
leading you on but one
straddling a stallion,
another bent back in a
tango no one ever comes
back from as they were
I could be a woman
who danced for
birth, danced for
spring the red bud
unfolding. Diamond
beads of sweat.
Before hospitals or
anesthesia, the
narcotic of hips and
muscles glowing,
undulating like
oceans, controlling,
relaxing, hypnotic as
swirling scarves,
candles on fingers,
a shadow behind
a screen, glides, floats,
the veiling a cape,
a lure, hooks
on the mystery
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.