Coda

North and alive, dull red lamp at night flaming behind wax
burns the dust off the mirror
the edge off living
outside the train
hoots
high-awesome.
This sputtering world by candlewax
but doll is reading
her neck collar on
to cut pain.
She hasn’t been to a hairdresser ever
her strawberry bangs get in her eyes
younger
she had auburn hair aburn. Lo, incunabular (cradle) world rock her.
Living with all the power in her compressed
her compromised body
has she committed infanticide?
She is a doll soldier’s bride
yes
not my pride but my child has died. Prisine. Child-bride.

Barker lifted his head as dogs will

on the way from the Tombs
in the Shenandoah valley April rose
sun’s angle
exquisite
light overbearing
as a young man might be on a young woman
but not uniform
the bursts of blue & gold flowers were casket-nails, loud like bursts of a gun.

Even in the darkest days of February

when you look at the schoolroom clock and it’s quarter to three
you look an hour later, it’s three. You brought Mr Ted to school with you.
There’s always Schwanda the bagpipe player.
Whether or not I’m in the classroom
I’m standing before pupils
entering the brown light cautiously, caringly
picking up the violet glass
in the inkwell closest me.

Poems previously published in Lace-Circled Darkness, Erbace Press, Liverpool, U. K. Erbace and Erbace Press

Lynn Strongin (b. NYC 1939) grew up in and around New York and in certain parts of the rural South which made a deep impression on her. Parents of Eastern European Jewish ancestors raised her in a rich artistic environment. Her memoir Indigo is based largely on these two locales. Chapters of Indigo have appeared in various venues such as StorySouth, Atlantic /3711, Verb Sap, The Square Table, Riverbabble and in Italy’s Storie. “Audubon Wallpaper,” a chapter which came out first in StorySouth was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She will have twelve books out by mid-2006, among them the anthology The Sorrow Psalms;A Book of Twentieth Century Elegy to be published by the University of Iowa Press, June 2006. Her work appears in over thirty anthologies, seventy journals. In the Sixties, she worked for poet Denise Levertov in the political environment of Berkeley. Most recently her prose has appeared in The Dublin Review. For the past twenty-five years she has made Victoria, British Columbia her home.

Lynn's book of short stories, Spin the Bottle: Kiss Me A Jewish child in the South has been accepted for publication by Plain View Press, Austin.

Email: Lynn Strongin

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