We will fold and freeze together
Far away from here
There is sun and spring and green forever
But now we move to feel


Mikiko Hara, Untitled (Is As It), 1996


The Mad Girl, Loses Her Discontinue Lipstick
-- by Lyn Lifshin

nearly missing the
metro, dumping
out zip bags, plastic
cases, forgetting her
bottle of water
before the dash to
the door. It’s just
a small loss in a
stretch of things
leaving her: teeth,
her publisher, the
man who doesn’t
exist. It’s too pale
she knows, not
worth tearing the
house apart, a
light rose flesh
color, almost not
there but somehow
better than the
others like lovers
she’s dreamt of,
imagined covering
her like lips trans-
forming what was



The Woman Who Loves Maps
-- by Lyn Lifshin

aches for the old
ones, dusky as an
abandoned ghost town
where the wooden
pier is driftwood.
She doesn't want
longitudes and
latitudes, favors
roads mutable as
a bracelet made
of sand she can
write an SOS in to
the wind. She dreams
of islands, magical
as the fingers of
the concert pianist,
each with its own
intelligence and
breath. She wants
the light to be what
photographers long
for, the magic hour
flecked with the color
of violet dusk, the
names of cities
exotic as spices or
words in another
language: Empanedas,
Esterellita, la trisleza
or the words left on
a Persian jar of lilies,
Dear Heart and then,
the way there



Belly
-- by David Brooks

This belly is not mine,
not the one I imagined
when I was younger and thought
about how it would be
when I got married.
This belly is a rude intrusion
into those dreams, it bumps
into my wife, who also differs
from that golden vision.
She is grander in ways
I never suspected: like my house,
she is bolder and kinder in dimension:
I used to think I would marry
a blonde and live in a shack,
both of us perpetually, pathetically thin.
I push my belly up against my wife
and admire the warmth of the
afternoon soaking into it.
The sun shines in on us
the way I like it, the sun is
the way I always thought
the sun should be.