Lyn Lifshin POEMS

Past the Abandoned Railroad where boys tried to lean into a nipple if you walked thru the thick wet leaves of Frog Alley where tourists sip cappuccino on the wrought iron chairs. When, finally, someone asked me to dance he tried to put his tongue in deep, his fingers past my blue dress dotted with rhinestones near where we bowled on New Years Eve and Sylvia, the tall elegant woman told me later I had lovely skin. From the bridge at Otter Creek, the old marble mill grew rivulets of ice, like bars, as if to cage the cold, the frozen spiders. Someone buried marbles ground to dust past the college spires, the last thing the girl with a baby growing in her saw flashing by as she jumped into the whirlpool's icy logs. Some nights I was sure I could hear her moaning as the falls crashed, spit ice up to Main Street and I ran, as if the crush of cold froth was a lure