Untitled Document


O Mice who have been to the fine arts museum

	by Lynn Strongin you have seen paintings under glass then returned to a close-up of grandmama newly in the asylum: you cannot sweep away her lifelong depression with your pirouette of dancing body nor with a straw stiff broom. In your earflaps & muff what can you know of madness frail shatterable girl whose lullabies were razor-blades for a time? The porch outside the pavilion still has leaves encased from autumn: maples scarlet in ice ———like lights in jars: Grandmama’s sorrow you see as dots of oil in lamps burning. ———————There is no genie you can coax to heal her. This is new the psychiatric ward in January daybreak ————icicles like ——organpipes where you visit grandmother in Boston: ——She’s a painting under glass ————not safely roped-off; ——you take photographs like mica-dust ——you snap create eidetic images ——frail shatterable girl O mice who have been the Fine Arts Museum, Boston lamenting on a Jeremiah morning ———before going with your mother on ——concert ——tour to Japan. O now Nippon.
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Lynn Strongin was born, NYC, 1939, and grew up during the war years in New York and various parts of the south. Early studies in musical composition branched out into the study of poetry. She worked for Denise Levertov in Berkeley in the Sixties, began publishing in various anthologies. After eight years in New Mexico, she moved to British Columbia, Canada, where she has lived for the past twenty-five years. in Canada, British dialects affect her tone of voice in poetry. She will have nine published books by mid-2006 (including one electronic chapbook), poems in over thirty anthologies, fifty-five journals in print and on-line. Recently she has been featured poet in New Works Review, Big Bridges, A Little Poetry, and is upcoming featured artist in Artistry in Life, and Snow Monkey. In December, a chapter of her memoir INDIGO was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.