LIV Sonnet
- LIV Sonnet
Returning to the old apartment in a war-torn districtI ran my finger along the panel of buttonsunable to locate my name.Lean Polish rivers ran understone bridges. The moon was a solid keg of oil Returning at night the train was stopped an hour having hit something on a trestle apparently a body, a suicide.I dressed in layers. Even in RussiaI hadn't needed three layers of stockings. They showcased their children. We hospital children were kept invisible.Paralysis took away height:Now not seeing immediate family again rubs a bright window in cold night. One pays a high price for disease: voice?Long ago, sun shone round & yellow in my throat,Now Christmas is in our throats:camera-shy I bed down in the war-torn district where I could hardly find my name. [End Page 16]
Lynn Strongin Born in New York City in 1939 to parents of Eastern European background, Strongin grew up surrounded by the arts. Stricken with polio at age 12, she was made a child of the ward at precisely mid century learning perhaps the most painful aspect of any disease: isolation. She has lived in British Columbia since 1979. Her poems have been translated into Italian and German and nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She has published 14 books and her work is in nummerous journals and anthologies. She edited The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth Century Elegy (University of Iowa , 2006). Her most recent poetry collection is The Girl with Copper-Colored Hair (Conflux Press).
