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IN A GREEN SHADE
Romare Beardan
this morning the pond
looks like green marble.
Rose and charcoal dissolving
to dove, to guava, rouge.
Only dream fish pushing
holes in the glass, so
unlike the pond, deep in
trees, almost camouflaged.
In the shade of dragon
flies, startling as coming
upon your reflection in a
mirror, just there under
trees and the wooden bar and
driftwood benches blackly
jade with pines dripping
into it, shadows close to
my hair. What I didn't have
blinded me so I hardly saw
the small birds, blue,
pulling out of moss and
leaves as if reaching into
the dark for their color
THERE SHOULD BE AS MANY WORDS FOR
LONELINESS
as
Sears makes colors close to rose: Fiesta pink,
dusty rose, camellia, terra cotta, pale rose blush,
pebble, coral light, Tahitian rose, ok coral,
Damask rose, pink carnation, there should be
shades of loneliness like musky rose, maypole
pink—I want more choices, nuances, subtly
different as desert blood from flambeau peach
Santa Fe peach, shrimp, strawberry, English
cream. The aloneness coming back to the only
dark house on the street where the driveway is
heaped with snow. Or lying alone, in a hospital,
bandaged, my skin ripped. I need skin colors
of rose, the nobody close enough to reach out
to hot ginger, apricot buff, tropic sand. I need
what's as close but different as peach fuzz, coral
nasturtium, sunset, musk melon, pomegranate,
a little gladiola and last apricot, apple blossoms
of longing, the softness of rose brown, tongue
colored laurel. No phones slice Turkish delphinium,
rust velvet, the dusky inner lips nobody feels,
so azalea blossom, so Cherokee sunset peach
TUESDAY BLUE
slick as egg plant
of sapphire,
a blue beard melting
over skin without
any color until
the blues takes it.
Royal blue,
bluer than Monday,
darker than antique
typewriters keys
shatter on with
one touch years
after the woman
who first touched
them plunged into
Otter Creek,
the baby, a pearl
in her, unraveling
beneath the suede
with matching boots.
Its blue on
fingers stains
the phone you'd
use ordering out
for Chinese food,
calling 911
after gulping
Valium in a
dream where the
subway out of
darkness lurches
off the track
BLUE FINGER BLUES
deep down and midnight
leaking out. It's a black
sapphire that won't stay
inside, can't keep its
mouth shut. So much
blue squeezed inside,
pressed down and deep,
a bluesy blue hum in
the willow, a teal riff on
the scat of loss. Some
times it pulses, twitches,
something wild inside
that gnaws thru glass
and screws, eats wood.
Blue glass beads on a
chain of blood in a
tornado. It waits like
grit becoming pearls,
the silk of leaves and
carbon hardening
to diamond. Vein dark,
midnight blue as
a mourning dove's
moan in the cold rain
while the heron stands
frozen and the blue
rises in my fingers
Lyn Lifshin's most recent book, BEFORE IT'S LIGHT,
received the Paterson poetry award and was published
by Black Sparrow press. She has published more than
100 books of poetry, including MARILYN MONROE, BLUE
TATTOO, won awards for her non fiction and edited 4
anthologies of women's writing including TANGLED
VINES, ARIADNE'S THREAD, and LIPS UNSEALED. Her poems
have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines
and she is the subject of a documentary film, LYN
LIFSHIN: NOT MADE OF GLASS, available from Women Make
Movies. Her poem, "No More Apologizing," has been
called "among the most impressive documents of the
women's poetry movement." Visit her online at
www.lynlifshin.com. |