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10 the minnesota review Lyn Lifshin I like men with something missing a heart a limb, an eye best if in Nam or at least some rehab center no one who doesn't break dates mona lies or reach for those lavendar zanex he must be outrageous a fabulous story teller good enough to make me believe what, when stripped from me will take so much of me with it I'll need to grow something, poems, that scar tissue to keep what's inside that makes me tough enough to be touched and feel little enough to keep going. first we burned even the birch covered with punky mushrooms the dried pearwood cherry then wrapped in electric Dial a Date Afterward Lifshin 11 blankets when houses still had light. Later we dressed in four layers of wool suddenly see thru nylon silk those sheer blouses young girls saved for were useless as see thru bikini tops to a woman with both breasts freshly gone. It was strange to be glad for drawers of my dead husband's sweaters the youngest wore them as a dress when she could still walk Television sets can't like dresser drawers, be used for the smallest coffins. With the trees turning into hulks of driftwood squirrels gnaw thru pebbles in the roof. Grass stays grey into what should be summer. Those left shiver in houses where there's nothing left to burn. A woman washing her baby notices blood in the sink the child's hair tangles around her ankles and wrists like sea weed or rope as candles sputter fall in to themselves too cars that used to sound like the sea even thru the 12 the minnesota review ring of maples are suddenly still, for days people waited for phones to work for something to come thru the snow on tv on channels as unlike what they'd seen as faces of those survivors at Nagasaki. It took days to see how what we couldn't see was turning the grass and leaves colorless as petals pressed in a book. Instead of cars, within the month, we began to hear digging, women sho didn't know how roots tangled under houses had to dig graves it was like they were scooping out parts of themselves the way they'd scooped out a squash and stuffed it with croutons and celery for Thanksgiving to bury babies they'd held weeks before, thankful there was no direct hit only to watch them roll into a ball and turn still as the branches. Soon all the lawns were mud. ...

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