FALL 2010



Lyn Lifshin

WHEN I WAS NO LONGER MY LEATHER JACKET

Something he’d picked up
and gently carried to the
closet. When I was no
longer something he half
wanted to wear, held so
delicately, smiled at like
when he came in later to
the reading, said he would
have brought the Margarita
but he didn’t know if I
liked it on the rocks, how I
felt about salt. Before i
was no longer my jacket,
darkly mysterious, soft but
with a musky smell, flexible
enough to do what he
wanted with. Before that I
was all animal, wild. I was prey
he was on a safari for, caught
in his crosshairs. He could
taste my hair thru e mail.
Once he tracked me as far as
San Antonio, couldn’t
find me. This time I was the
lure, the flash of a few verbs and
he cancelled classes, took off
work. I was something he
couldn’t stroke like the leather.
He was used to things being
fatal, leaps and cracks. He was
a journalist, wanted no
emotion to get in the way
of the facts.



Recent books from Lyn Lifshin: THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MYYEAR WITH RUFFIAN, Texas Review Press, ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME from Black Sparrow at Godine., following COLD COMFORT and BEFORE IT’S LIGHT, DESIRE and 92 RAPPLE. She has over 120 books & edited 4 anthologies. Also out recently: NUTLEY POND, PERSEPHONE, BARBARO: BEYOND BROKENNESS, LOST IN THE FOG, LIGHT AT THE END, JESUS POEMS and BALLET MADONNAS, KATRINA, LOST HORSES. forthcoming: CHIFFON, ALL THE POETS WHO HAVE TOUCHED ME, LIVING AND DEAD. ALL TRUE: ESPECIALLY THE LIES. Her web site is www.lynlifshin.com

 

 


 

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