Lyn Lifshin

 

the cat comes
upstairs runs
his face into
me curls on my
chest   I can
hardly write
the nightmares
down with his
loud fur in
my mouth it
scratches at
dead lovers
he pushes thru
with his nose
as if he was
an earthworm
and my black,
something
to eat

 

Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books and chapbooks including 3 from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It’s Light, and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Before Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle, Lifshin published both her prize winning book about the short lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian, and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Recent books include Ballroom, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially The Lies, Light At the End: The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Mirrors, Persephone, Lost In The Fog, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems, A Girl Goes into The Woods from NYQ books, Hitchcock Hotel from Danse Macabre, Tangled as the Alphabet — The Istanbul Poems from NightBallet Press, and Malala. Just out are The Marilyn Poems from Rubber Boots Press, Femme Eterna, and Moving Through Stained Glass: the Maple Poems. An update to her Gale Research Autobiography is out: Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On The Outside. Also just released is a dvd of the documentary film: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. Forthcoming works are: Degas’ Little Dancer, The Silk Road, and Winter Poems from Kind of a Hurricane press. Find her at www.lynlifshin.com