Lyn Lifshin, Writing Class, Syracuse Winter (poem)

write, he said looking like an even craggier Lincoln, your impressions the next 4 days, details of a walk across campus. Even now I remember I wore a strawberry wool skirt, matching sweater. There was bittersweet near the Hall of Language. I curled in a window ledge of a cave in Crouse, an organ drifting thru smooth warm wood. I could let the wine dark light hold me, slid on the ice behind where a man with a blue mole picked me up, my notes scattering up Comstock. Torn tights, knees snow kissed the skin off. I was hypnotized by that huge growth, said yes tho I only half remembered. Upstairs icicles clotted, wrapped glass in gauze. There must have been some one who didn’t call. Blue walls, ugly green bedspread, Dorothy popping gum, eating half a tuna sandwich before we’d lie in bed with the lights out wondering what it would be like to have Dr Fox with his red beard go down on us as we braided and rubbed our mahogany hair dry and I tried to figure out what to do with the bittersweet, torn knees, ragged maples, didn’t believe I’d ever have anything to write about

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