Lyn Lifshin: I THINK OF MY GRANDFATHER

Lyn Lifshin
I THINK OF MY GRANDFATHER

on a cramped ship
headed toward Ellis Island.
Fog, fog horns for a
lullaby. The black
pines, a frozen pear.
Straw roofs on fire.
If there were postcards
from the sea there might
have been a Dear
Hannah or Mama, hand
colored with salt.
I will come and get you.
If the branches are
green, pick the apples.
When I write next, I will
have a pack on my
back, string and tin.
I dream about the snow
in the mountains. I never
liked it but I dream of
you tying a scarf
around my hair, your
words that white dust

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. 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, and others. Forthcoming are Degas’ Little Dancer and Winter Poems from Kind of a Hurricane Press, and others. Her poem “But Instead Has Gone Into the Woods” appears in Issue No. 10 of Cleaver. “The Affair” appears in Issue 13.