poetry from Lyn Lifshin

LOVING THE NAMES OF THE CITIES YOU FALL THRU


Kuala Lampur.
Jakarta, Ho Chi
Min City, wildly
intriguing as
yours, with its
season nothing
season nothing

melts in. I think
how you write
of your friend
scattering his
mother’s ashes.
how probably
you didn’t even

have that when
your mother
leaped into
Niagara Falls.
Your “plans”
have changed”
you wrote two

years ago. They
keep changing
but I don’t think
now I’ll know





Lyn Lifshin

poetry from Lyn Lifshin

I THINK OF YOU WITH YOUR CAT AND INSULIN NEEDLES


that’s how I will scan
you under my hair
talking after the first
reading at Rosa del Sol
when I was still some
one you wanted, tried
to find me in San Antonio.
I’ll think of you scooping
your “guy” the stray up,
fussing over how he
guzzled water, was a little
` too fat. I won’t think of
the only time you kissed
me and I knew it was the
last. You, at the vet, all
day for the glucose panels
soothes. I know now I’ll
think of your cat still with
you probably longer than
most women. How you
measure his water, how
you found him near the
Golden Gate. I won’t think
of suicide there, a perfect
spot, as Niagara Falls was
for your mother. I like it that
you named him Question. I
have a lot of questions too.
I’ll think of you listening as
he talks and talks of her, of
course, in a questioning tone,
will imagine you stroking
his tail that bends and hooks
at the top into a question mark
and know like so much, I’ll
think about you too often,
he’s soot black





Lyn Lifshin