Lyn Lifshin

 

you can almost always
see the mother’s hands

the daughter usually
nests in a curve of
the mother’s hair or
neck like it was a cave

the way cats do the
night it starts to snow.

some seem to suck
on the mother’s breath
you might think the
mother had eyes
in her fingers

often her hands
are on the daughter’s
shoulders pulling
her close as if

she wanted to press
her back inside

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