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| Lyn Lifshin [pic courtesy of Melusine] |
from Lyn Lifshin’s before it’s LIGHT: new poems,1999
The
No More Apologizing, the No More Little Laughing Blues
[excerpt]
the
only place I said what I meant
was
in poems. That green was like some
huge
forbidden flower that grew so
big
it couldn’t even fit in the house . . .
you know I pretended,
pretended,
pretended, I
couldn’t
stop trying to please
the
A, the star, the good girl
on
the forehead. The spanking
clean
haunted half my life.
But
the poems had their own life
and
mine finally followed
where
the poems were growing,
warm
paper skin growing
finally
in my real bed
until
the room stopped spinning for
good
the way it used to when I dressed
up
in suits and hair spray
pretending
to be all those things I
wasn’t:
teacher, good girl, lady,
wife
. . .
But
now when I hear myself laughing
the
apologizing laugh, I know what
swallowing
those black seeds can
do
and I spit them out. Like tobacco.
(something
men could always
do)
Nothing good grows from the
I’m
sorry, sorry, only those dark
branches
and they will
get
you from inside
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| urban life |
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