Lyn Lifshin

i’m running around in the
city hardly knowing anyone
Someone with yr hair and
accent comes asks me to
have a coffee. a wind comes
up a whole field of straw
uprooted blackening the
valley everyoneis running
trying to climb the wall
A door opens in the clover
and we go inside in each
other’s arms relieved
breathing starting to
build a fire. then a man
comes out of the shadows
holding his hand over his
heart moaning a name that
isn’t mine but means me.
the voice is darker than
the inside of a glove

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Check out another of Lyn Lifshin’s poems from our archive, “the bad reading snow or, we could get together and swing only.”

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