Drove in a blue daze thru Kinderhook
with it almost raining.
Lights on in the stucco house.
Jason in a steep decline, screamed
is the damn house on the market,
you don’t need a sump pump.
Dust, sawdust, a week of spaghetti
glued on plates piled near the sink.
I try to make tea out of dust.
See my own house exploding like a baby
left alone in a house with no food
chewing on electric wires. By four
sawdust glues my eyelids together
and I curl into a cocoon of myself
under a quilt where it’s black.
I wake up dragged down too, wanting
to sleep thru the month
tho the bed smells of cats.
The pizza Jason brings onto the blue spread
dries. A pawmark hardens in it
like catprints in old bricks.
We put our names in the cement last August
and the cat’s paw on a day
it was too hot and humid to dry.
(From Lyn Lifshin’s Diary, 1977)
Verbatim Poetry 