Lyn Lifshin, "E Mail #77 I Can't Send"
Kathleen Rooney, "You Know How I Worry About You Dying"
David Hart, "Pourriture nobile"
Lyn Lifshin
E Mail #77 I Can’t Send
did you feel like
an escort? Did
you feel like a
gigolo driving
Ms. Lifshin.
title of an E
Mail you sent
me before I
sensed you
wouldn’t send
more. I suppose
you never were
trained to be
one. You were
never on time
and aren’t
escorts supposed
to dress natty?
Not in wrinkled
running shorts,
isn’t a gigolo
supposed to be
stunning? You
were, tho, and
that’s where this
poem falls apart—
I’m not in the same
anguish I was, in
the agony when
other things this
week left me. But
I think if I write
you into poems
you’ll appear. I
wonder if I could
think of something
awful you did it
would be easier to
forget you. Instead,
one woman writes me
says he was “a dear”
says she’d like to write
you. Another calls
you a hunk. Another
says “I can see why
you find him fascinating.”
Weeks before he
wrote “do I sense a
change in a lowering of
the temperature?” as if
he could taste my
fear. He hadn’t even
kissed me when he put my
jacket in his closet as
if it was me, left it while
we went for drinks.
When we came back at
midnight for the late
night slam he showered,
said you don’t want to
take anything with you
do you as if that way we’d
come back at 3 or 4 and
it would be too late
for me to leave.
But I wasn’t sure
what he was thinking.
He said he was leaving his
wife because she could
not communicate and
because she’s Russian,
has always kept
things inside. Well, I’m
Russian too but if he
was closer I’d tell him I
think the one who isn’t
saying what he means
is you
Kathleen Rooney
You Know How I Worry About You Dying
before me. So even in my dreams,
you mess with me, pretending
you’ve been killed—a cowboy shot
in an Indian ambush. (My dreams
aren’t PC, okay?) And as you lie
there in the dust, eyes glassy,
life oozing from your wound,
I rush to your side ready to stanch
the bleeding with my petticoat,
your bandana, anything at hand,
begging you not to give up the ghost
because with you, life is essential.
Without you, it’s all the rest—assorted
boring mises en scenes, monotonous
landscapes unbroken by mountains
of trees, me drifting like a stupid drab
tumbleweed. I plead like this until
you stand, smile, brush the sand
from your chaps, and show me:
the arrow’s not through your heart,
just stuck under your arm.