Words & Pictures East Coast, LLC
 |
[Home] [Bookstore] [Gallery] [Poets/Artists] [Fun Stuff] [Vital Links] [Contact]
[Home]
Products
Bookstore
Art Gallery
Poetry & Humor
Lots of Poetry
Featured
poem
Humor/Light
Verse
Essays
Professional Services
About us
Writing
Services
Art
Services
Web
Services
Guests
Poets
Visual Artists
News
Local Events
Releases
Archives
Fun Stuff
Free
Samples
Free Art
Lesson
Experimental
Stuff
Links
Vital Links
Writing
Links
Art
Links
WEB Info Links
Contact
Email & Address
Info
[Return to Guest Poets Page] [Next Page]Lyn Lifshin
Lyn Lifshin's last book, Cold
Comfort from Black Sparrow Press, one of a series of books
they will be doing, was a finalist in the Patterson Award. Other finalists
include Maxine Kumin, Philip Levine and Marie Howe. Her next book,
Before
It's Light, will be published by Black Sparrow in 1999. Lyn Lifshin has written more than 100 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A., and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library. Lyn Lifshin has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lyn is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. For her absolute dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for managing to survive on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution, Lifshin has earned the distinction "Queen of the Small Presses." She has been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as " a modern Emily Dickinson." Contact Lyn at onyxvelvet@aol.com See more of Lyn's work at www.lynlifshin.com BARBIE HUNTS THRU MEDICAL BOOKS LOOKING FOR WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER WHEN SHE SEES HER BIRTH DATE IN A BOOK, KNOWS SHE IS OVER 30 and feels so hollow inside, unfulfilled, as if all she's done is change her clothes. She wonders a bout the women's movement, maybe she frowns it's the change and she hasn't even had a baby, had a period, a hair that was not in place. Perfection that can be shelved, one yank and I'd be bald, naked. She flips thru chapters on neurosis, wonders if it's hormones she lacks. Where she's been, hardly seems to matter :the beach, Sun Valley, Spain. It's all facade, going thru the motions. What did a wedding get me she groans I never was free moving, as they said in 1975 but empty, full of holes - some thing just for someone else to collect or abuse THE MAD GIRL READS A RETIRED GENERAL'S ACCOUNT OF HIROSHIMA THE DAY THE SKY WAS BLEACHED A BRIGHT WHITE, IS STUNNED that they never were supposed to call it the bomb but a gadget or gimmick, how they practiced that summer like boys in a circle jerk she thinks, dropping replicas of bombs, called them little pumpkins. She reads how they were up before sun rise, the sky crystal clear, a huge red ball of rising sun and how he watched the Enola Gay slowly open its bay doors, and let go thinking it's too late now. there's no string attached, there's no way to bring it back. It starts sounding like he's talking about an orgasm, it seems weird. The way it's out there. She reads mission as emission begins to think only a penis or someone connected to one could get in to this in these terms: the tail shaking through superheated air, the vertical cloud rising upward. Sure sounds sexual she thinks. Even the term Little Boy, that gun barrel-like cylinder she wouldn't resist having for a day to try to feel what it would be like to hit the target, start the chain reaction. She might get a sense of that power, control, of that ride on what could vaporize, her hand on the throttle, shifting for herself as she holds the course with a lot of flak all around her as she lurches, lets go -- everything below bursting, all flash and fire, blinding lights and trembling in waves that just keep coming CONDOM CHAIN LETTER use this condom and then send it on to the name at the bottom. You will be rewarded in 15 days with 11 used safes. Do not discard. One man did not believe in this and a wasp the size of New England invaded his house. Now he won't need more. Your luck will change soon. 20 condoms won't be enough for one night: women will flock to you as if the tips were coded with something they've felt and need again. You can't lose. Put this down and let your dog eat it-- one man did and his penis withered to a thimble of dusty skin, a feather crows swooped down to use for their nest. That was the last he saw of it. Send 75 used condoms. Your hemorrhoids will disappear. Only your wallet and your penis will get bigger. Another man who threw this chain away lost everything that extended more than half an inch from his body to sharks. And when he finally sent it on, fingers and thighs grew back, his nose and ear, even a nub of a penis. This is no joke JESUS WONDERS ABOUT GOING INTO PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MAYFLOWER MADAM She knows the tricks, how to lure and dazzle, soothe aching hearts with a touch, bring joy and passion. Not a bad goal J.C. murmurs, noticing his followers have gone or have their own side trips, hating the homeless, screaming at whores, wanting to take food stamps away from babies. He knows if the religious right saw him on the street they would look at him with disgust, sure he's a lazy pan handler, a hippie, a bum. He sees meanness in those who wave his name on a flag, feels more compassion in the Madam, more tenderness, more joy. She takes the time to please another, gives of her body and her time unlike some of the hot dog rabble rousing religious right guys. J.C. dials, gets her answering machine, all softness and fluttering, not stones and swords and guns and he thinks how together they might teach something about opening to joy, about the deepest communion and what being entered by the Beloved really means THE OLD WOMAN IN AMSTERDAM like someone who feels she'll be pressed in the dark of earth who walks with all her windows open, nude, skin flapping like fingers signing in a house of blind men. She cuts maples to stubs to let sun eat her, leaves shutters open in rain to feel her hair flow like linden dust, doesn't want anything heavy as earth on her yet. She sleeps on top of a pile of blue quilts as if her life was leaves resting on a lake fish drift up in thru dark water BASIL all the way down the sloped hill under the white pines You should pick it when the sun is low and night's water is wild on the red grass don't kick up the sweet lace twist or crunch out the smell But pick it while it's sucking up afternoon light its smell on your fingers like a lover, pin it to beams in rooms apricot light will sneak thru glazing bare walnuts knowing the leaves still wait in snow full of what drew you to it THAW Ice comes undone Skin shining and hair full of March women spill out of offices their bones whispering Glazed orchards and vines coming back Green is under the snow the women's arms seem to open as if to lift them past fluorescent air toward whatever mysteries are hidden from them Later nearly blinded by water and light they'll move a 1 o'clock wave their hair folding back into rooms of machines and paper. But no desks can hold such dreaming blood, drunk on the poems sun makes in their bodies UNDER THE ROSE lips remind us of those lips down there you said once, kissing the back of an envelope with red gloss. Your mirror had a wreathe of men drawn by the suck of your soft whispers, a tongue they read the braille of. Cold comfort you wrote me more years later than we were then. Still, I envied how their mouths looked for any mouth of yours, the silk and slippery so many thought came from your heart. You had parasols from exotic night clubs I was insulted I looked too young to be served in. Lara, your room always smelled of scent, while mine reeked of paint and glue for some science project. You took so many sailors' pea coats in your hand, pulled them to you. Now I hear you had enough, as if you outlived your own curiosity and what I longed for put you to sleep. None of those lovers could fill you. At the end, you left even your children as if every thing stuffed into you gnawed until what glittered was like a mine so scooped of rubies it collapsed BARBIE WATCHES TV ALONE, NAKED She's got her bride clothes on the floor her can can skirt, pale ruffly fish net tights and a cameo choker tossed around the bed like a moat. Now she's got the remote control clicker and can switch and change, not be at someone else's whim, her body twisted, dressed and undressed, a slave to another's fingers as if her ankles were bound in leather, chained, legs spread apart on some pilary. Travel around the World with Barbie stamped on her forehead in catalogues from Sears. She is sick of having a rod jammed up in side her, of being boxed in with a hair brush that usually goes where it shouldn't. She wants to lie in tv light not have to hide what she is missing: a belly button, skin that smells like skin, doesn't want to have to keep smiling as any stranger who buys her twists her arm out of its socket or throws her out Copyright © 1999. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Duplication of this poetry and/or art without permission of the author/artist is forbidden under copyright law. Please ask permission if you wish to use for non-commercial purposes
Tuesday, July 11, 2000 |