flamencos past the catacombs, gypsies
past the monastery of cloistered monks.
How little she supposed years past those
days her hair hung past her wrists she’d
ache for nights when it struck midnight
and everyone who mattered to her would
be a moat around her aloneness, wildly
swallowing green grapes as the clock
banged at each bell and cheers and
sparkling white wine filled the ink blue
air. Those dozen grapes gulped in the
square, fast, faster to insure a good year
to come. How she’d look for the smallest
green grapes, giggling and swallowing for
luck and love and then the Spanish
wine maker wearing red underwear to
assure whatever the next year wraps
them in will be better than the one
they are sloughing behind likek worn out
shoes you can’t wait to throw out
the window into a bon fire where nothing
that was terrible can stay
Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books and chapbooks including three from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It's Light and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Before Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle, Lifshin published her prize-winning book about the short-lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Recent books include Ballroom, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially The Lies, Light At the End: The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Mirrors, Persphone, Lost In The Fog, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems . NYQ books published A Girl Goes into The Woods. Also just out: For the Roses, poems after Joni Mitchell and Hitchcock Hotel from Danse Macabre; Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle and Tangled as the Alphabet,-- The Istanbul Poems from NightBallet Press. Just released, as well, Malala, the DVD of Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. The Marilyn Poems was just released from Rubber Boots Press. An update to her Gale Research Autobiography is out: Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On The Outside. Also just out is a DVD of the documentary film about her: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made Of Glass. Just out: Femme Eterna and Moving Through Stained Glass: the Maple Poems. Forthcoming: Degas Little Dancer and Winter Poems from Kind of a Hurricane press, Poems and Paintings from Tangerine press and The Silk Road from Night Ballet, Ice Maiden from Transcendent Zero Press
