Lyn Lifshin isn't so much "well-published" in hard-copy little magazines as ubiquitous. Her latest book, _Cold Comfort_ , is coming out from Black Sparrow soon, and she reports she recently read with Sparrow in NYC. She can be reached at onyxvelvet@aol.com.



Friday Night Metro


sliding into leather
with a book I want
to swim in the woman
putting on lip stick
in the side seat inches
away seems somehow
different, but not
wildly raving or
drugged. She's got
a Chicago paper, not
the Washington Post.
A wool skirt and
sweater. Then I see
she's carrying 3 other
coats, heavy dark
wool ones and at
least 7 shopping bags
but if this was a
month earlier, they
could be for Christmas
shopping. I can't
concentrate on the
best of 1996 short
stories. The clot of
tinsel, a rope of it
wadded around an old
doll, glitters. Then
the woman starts
yelling, tho softly, at
the paper, shaking her
fist. She stops, picks
up again as if she's
hearing answers from
the paper and now I'm
uneasy, don't want to
stare but see she's
big, seems to be bigger
than when I first sat
down. Thick dark
curls, even dressed as she
is, in a farm town in
Nebraska somehow she'd
fit in. As the subway moves
deeper into Virginia and
there's fewer people, every
one becomes quieter, looks
down at their own lap. She
spreads her bags and a box
I hadn't noticed into the
aisle, spreads out, a bear
going into hibernation.



Lyn Lifshin

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