Great Kills Review
Winter
2008 – Volume II, issue 1
|
Lyn Lifshin |
Red, All Colors Linked To Poor Soil
truthfully, when “flamboyant” is
how
you describe some ballroom
dress
or a mini skirt on a woman
who’s
worn them the third time
around they
are in fashion, don’t you
see that look,
you know the one that’s
half scorn,
half jealousy, that “she’s
over sixty,
how can she flaunt those
legs” or that
“what do pre teens expect, going out
with
fishnet and belly buttons and
more exposed.”
You know what I mean so why not admit it.
I wonder if it’s like with trees, the splash
of red fall color,-- sure
we know the
old colder temperatures and
chlorophyll
story but some trees also appear
to flame
with deeper red pigments,
wildly bright
and eye catching,
flamboyant yes but
their roots are in soil
that’s low in nutrients.
They have nothing to protect the leaves,
delay their decay. They are
struggling. They
have trouble adapting. So next
time you
look over at a woman you
might call
a floozy in her satins
and lace hose or skirt
showing more than you think it
should, in
those fuck me shoes and
sequins, imagine her
lonely, aching for what could
protect her,
hold her, something she doesn’t
have.
And for those baby Lolitas, just for a
minute,
kiss your own child for
them, pray the cold
in their life doesn’t get
them
Like The Woman Whose Father Wrote Calligraphy On
Her Body She
could only want men
who later did, as if
she was rare paper,
the only surface
worthy of their words.
It was as if even the
act, the attention to
each curve of ink,
the whiteness of
her body, and the
way each letter
was a caress and
how, absent, what was
deepest inside him
was part of her, was
in her blood, would
grow as she would and
be the last thing she
could hold on to,
be there when she
died, even if he wasn’t.
His World Was
becoming his
last world
early. It was
lighter than
the day before,
He had leaped
under a cloud
less sky and
this time
those clouds,
concrete angels,
caught him
and wouldn’t
let him go
“Red, All Colors Linked To Poor Soil” © 2008
by Lyn Lifshin
“Like The Woman
Whose Father Wrote Calligraphy On Her Body She” © 2008 by Lyn Lifshin
“His World Was” © 2008 by Lyn Lifshin
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