If I had the body I had
when I had them, I’d
dance naked for them.
Don’t think “had” means
what you’re thinking.
Now I wouldn’t push
away fingers sliding
under the wool skirt that
itched. I’d be ok with
where they headed. Now
when one peeled rhine-
stone cluster earrings
off in the room over the
Inn’s dance floor, I
wouldn’t run. Now my
mother won’t dread I’ll
be sold to the white slave
market, waste my hymen
on a man who hated Jews.
I have a photograph of
one cut from my college
yearbook in a drawer in
upstate New York. Now
he’s famous I recently
read, not living far from
where I’m writing this.
“Man with an accent
called. Will call back
later”, in a box of ticket
stubs, love debris. If he
ever read this so many
years from when I broke
dates for a too innocent
night, he couldn’t know
my new name, and if he
did, it’s so late it couldn’t
matter
She lies on her back like an animal in surgery.
She lies on her back like an animal in surgery.
Only her bones with the books, poor Mama.
Only her bones with the books, poor Mama.
Only her long pale hair, luxurious on her last day
Poor Mama, buried with books she wouldn’t read.
Now I wish she’d call me but she doesn’t call back.
Now I wish she’d call me she doesn’t call back.
In dreams she is young and can open any jar.
In dreams she is young and can open any jar.
She’s a beauty in dreams, still gets the most
calls of anyone in her college. Calls when I
want her to call but isn’t desperate to get me.
Glass stones I leave on her grave are never there
when I go back. Glass stones I leave on her grave,
gone when I go back. She is alone now in the rain,
not caring to talk to my father. It rains and freezes.
Her house is filled with strangers. Her favorite tub,
dust. Her stone is tilting. Everyone said if anyone
could get through from beyond she could. All
those books, in Hebrew, and nothing to read. The
phone that wouldn’t stop now hardly rings. In dreams
she is call in the snow we could pour maple syrup on
if she could call
resembling all the
women I wanted to be,
onyx hair and a look
of not being quite
where she wanted to
be. She could double
for Mrs Berge, the
ballet teacher some
thought to be French
tho she was Berger.
High cheek bones,
skin calla lily pale.
Slim women, haughty
women. Or maybe
somewhere else when
talking to you: in
some park in Berlin,
doing choreography for
the Metropolitan, a
pas de deux to erase
how they were treated
in the old country. Sylvia
is as distant. You can
tell she’d rather be some
where else, in a Josh
Logan play again, not
with short, chubby Howie
with his small town
department store. It’s
not enough her house is
a theater, ebony, snow
and blood. If you look at
some angles you’ll
see the look of disdain
I learned from her, dying
to move toward a
man, an audience. The
simple thrill of my long
white arms enough
before I’m spun from
this life more real than
my real life
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.