Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin's ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME was published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006. It has been selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for previous finalists of the Paterson Poetry Prize. (ORDER@GODINE.COM ).For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com.

SELECTED VALENTINO POEMS




DREAMING VALENTINO


I only saw The Sheik
thru Tony Dexter, suave
and dark as the men
who mattered usually
were. Riveting,
dangerous. Tho a man
had never touched me,
after that Saturday after-
noon at the Campus
Theater, I started my Tony
Dexter/ Valentino dream,
imagined the rose Pola
Negri left on his grave
each year, the smell of
her lavender gauzy chemise,
how, in his arms there was
only their bodies. No
matter Valentino's voice
might have grated in
jumpy silent films where
organs swelled. Tony
Dexter as that heart throb
a whole nation stopped
and watched when
Valentino died young
and the death train ran
across the country. I
wished I was alive then,
those white roses,
smoldering eyes
lifting me out of
what seemed colorless




VALENTINO



it wasn't even Valentino
but Tony Dexter as
Valentino. Sexy with
those blazing licorice
eyes. A look so hypnotic
I would have gone
anywhere with him.
When women melted
under his gaze, home
work and science projects
seemed unimportant.
I wanted to be Pola
Negri, adored and
adoring and then
doomed. Pola in a white
filmy dress bent back
wards in his arms. I
wanted to bring white
roses to his grave,
weep a joyful agony
and never have mascara
run down my skin




IT WAS TONY DEXTER, NOT VALENTINO



But I didn't care,
one notice and I
was hooked, astonished
at something smoldering
inside him, a black
burning over the
heads of popcorn tossing
boys to glue me to
dark eyed black haired
men forever. Tony Dexter
was Valentino. For
years I would turn from
blond blue eyed men.
There, in the Campus
Theater's dark, the
flashing capes, sand
blowing ripples in the
desert. I shivered, the tent
flaps opening as every
thing in me did, something
I'd never felt




THAT TONY DEXTER, THAT VALENTINO



It was Tony I feel for
playing the sheik women
fainted for, shrieked
for in theaters,
followed in tears
when he died too soon.
The blackest hair,
licorice eyes. No wonder
a mischievous student,
Salvatore Falova, with that
same darkness, hooded
eyes, got to me. All
old men now, if
alive but for years on
Valentino's birth date and
death date I could have
been the veiled women with
flowers at his grave who
was shrouded so I
could imagine one was me.
I remember how I
moved with the Tony-
Dexter-Valentino
into the blackness of a
tent the flaps
in my dreams
opening like labia