things I have and
don’t have
come from this
moving between people like leaves like
smoke.
—from “Drifting”
Lifshin writes with energy, fire, and truth of the common world of experience. Bearing signs of struggle, pain, and loss, these poems carry the history of the body with agony and pride, as enduring tokens of what it is to be alive.
Contents include Onyxvelvet (Autobiography), After Dark My Sweet (Love and Erotica), Despite Everything (Family), Blissful Misfits and Secret Faces (Other People), Black Trillium and Apricot Wind (Place).
Magnificently crafted poems…concise field reports from a woman warrior at the front line of feeling.
—Choice