Lyn Lifshin

Dropping The Bottle Of Perfume My Mother Always Wore

Carl’s Department Store Bathroom

was on the third floor up, past slipcovers and tablecloths. There was even an / elevator girl in a black-and-white uniform who listed each floor’s contents, / Ladies’ apparel, china, silver plate, until almost halfway into the nineties, / when Carl’s, the last of three department stores downtown, took down its last Christmas / window, outlasting my mother, who near the end was no longer able to tear through / dress racks for bargains, and sat thinly on a chair

The Can Of Paint

Kathy opened the front door one Tuesday morning dressed in dirty rags and holding a little aluminum paint can in her arms. “From the moment she stepped inside the shelter, she mystified us,” one woman says. “Whatever she did, wherever she went, the little paint can never left her hands.”

That Other August 6

Selected Poems

He Said In The Hospital It

Selected Poems

The President’s Arms Are Like Oak Branches

Taking My Mother To The Bathroom

The Mad Girl Is Flip, Uses Words