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lynn skapyak-harlin |
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Lynn Skapyak Harlin has been a freelance writer for thirty-five years. Her writing has been published in textbooks, trade magazines, literary magazines, and newspapers. Her first poem appeared in Time Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Aquarian, Arbus, Women's Voices, State Street Review, Section 8 and others. Closet Books has issued two chapbooks of Lynn's poetry: Real Women Drive Trucks (1997) and Press One for More Options (1997).
She teaches writing seminars on her shanty boat located on the Trout River. She became Senior Editor of Closet Books in 2002.
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When words hit
too harshly then
this poet sees
less words as more
life as death undone
moving, stillness on the run
thinking, dreaming without the snore.
Some statements make her yearn
to be in any exotic place;
to be the ignorant, alien face
there among people foreign,
strange. To turn, to see,
to hear things undecipherable.
This numbs, calms, restores her,
to be ignored, not expected
to respond, how incomprehensible.
For here, at home among her own,
she hears words recognizable
in places where she's been
before with faces familiar.
Here, where sounds immediately
become words, phrases
she's heard before, should know.
Yet at this moment these sounds
make less sense, mean no more
than the mewing of a strange cat.
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Sticking Things Where They Don't Belong |
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Homey patter, nicey niceness,
insipid chatter between
the evening news team.
Smiling hucksters of sweetness
stuck between blaring
sounds, phrases proclaiming,
"Local slaughter so and so murdered
details at eleven. Stay tuned."
She shakes her head to clear it.
Words have folds of meaning
shifting, jiggling, seeming
fast yet in slow-motion,
words sound shifty
simultaneously,
crafty racy saucy,
Mundane sayings get a notion
to change. STOP sign appears
with question mark STOP? to her ears,
transforming the meaning
striking out, molding
questions out of statements,
stating questioning commands.
Words ringing reverberations,
waves of, years of questions
unanswered; at 55,
silence is not solace.
It is too much echoing space,
sounding resounding
unanswered questions
in her brain like the rain
incessantly striking
a tin roof; staccato stabs
stiletto heels stomping
punctuation into Proust.
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Tawdry times –
war and death days,
love beads, no bra, hairy legs,
gaudy grass bliss, free love
learning freedom – knowing,
free is not just another word.
She is still stuck in the sixties,
caring, craving for peace.
“Freedom’s just another word…”
now, nearing her sixty year mark.
Her best years, living long hair,
wailing guitar, whiskey voice,
free kinky times, war years with
dread, dead, desolate, disillusion-
filled lyrics, Dylan’s strange twang,
his erratic pacing mimicking the times.
Each nightly newscast death tally,
just like today, over 40 years, her dreams,
her reality, her worst fears made real,
images of war burned, blurred bodies,
twined -- dancing to destruction’s beat,
blood beads spill still in war-torn lands.
“…just another word.”
No change -- since sixties time,
she’s still caring, craving peace,
still stuck, learning freedom,
torn in tawdry war and death days.
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The last year before her body was done on earth,
in the study she looked big-eyed, hollow-cheeked,
flashing hands, finger pointed, saying, “I hate the pity
worse than the cancer eating at me, hate the way they ‘tsk’ and say,
“What a shame, oh Laura,” they drawl, instant tears starting,
smarting their tepid stares. While at that instant thinking,
“Whew Laura, I’m glad it’s you, not me. I’m not ready to go.
She surely didn’t do something I do…”
“Death – they see death, not me. Me grasping at the little life left,
recklessly riding that last wave on a long board soaring steady, like me
when I was all alive, leaning into the curl. Life furled billowed then, like a full
jib seizing wind. I captured it with a camera click, painted it in oils, collected,
caught life, squeezed colors out of, into every living thing around me.
I woke to ocean waves breaking and slept seventeen years close to a bear,
all the while yearning for some unseen silken warmth.
I lusted for learning these last years of my life; found a quieting,
an acceptance of me and an eerie serenity in death’s coming.”
“Now, knowing the date – this edict with no appeal – makes me
see, I’ve done most of the things that stirred passion in me. I’m ready,
not willing but ready, to let this diseased body cease to be. You know what
though? I hurt worse when I know I’m already dead to so many
who stand right in front of me. Death, mocking me in the eyes
of former friends fearing their certain mortality, ancient loves repulsed by
me, they avoid me, saying, “I don’t want to remember her that way.”
“Death, looking belligerently at me, damn, before I am even done!”
She seethed with life-longing, railed with live anger, locked eyes.
“Ah shit!” she said exasperated, breaking into a grin,
“Ah shit, I’d say the same thing if it wasn’t me.”
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