Download PDF Here
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing September 2023
Silent, poems by Lynn Strongin.
Silent
. . . the doorbell as falling snow
Guests
Personages, courtesans gone now.
No longer come.
A fox-hound sky, clouds the color of almond.
I press my ear to sky. Glory be! Bread of the Angels would restore me.
Tucked away in hangars. Insies and outsies.
Grain is blocked by war the other side of the world;
People are starved. Whereas my Aunt Vi has a history implant in her.
So the twilight of life is marred. We are just guests. All things lost
come back to haunt me: North, South, East, West. Mimosa feathers
and shade trees . . . woven on a mountain loom
By a jubilance broken under the howling foxes,
in wonder of a winter moon…
Leaning into it,
your birthday. Faraway. You’re catching up on chocolates.
In Ireland it’s a bank holiday
a dining bucket list for that late summer get-away.
In dream comes tall rangy gourmet girl with a twist
her cosmetics from Mary Kay
the school of lost silks.
Leaning back to catch your breath,
‘lost you’ you say conversation’s end. Lady, it’s curtains.
Coffee-colored suede,
You shrug off as many losses as the leopard’s spots.
© Lynn Strongin
Lynn Strongin was born and raised in New York city. She has twelve books of poems. NEA, two PEN Grants, a Woodcock emergency Writer’s Grant, Canadian. Her latest book KIOSK is published in Liverpool, U.K. upcoming are an interview with Danielle Ofri, M.D. and a feature in storySouth where her work will be featured. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia this autumn.