Scrambler

independent publisher


Lyn Lifshin of Niskayuna, NY passed away on December 9, 2019. Lyn was a poet who had written over 130 books and chapbooks and edited four anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines. She has given more than 700 readings across the USA and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum and Huntington Library. Lyn also taught poetry at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award, she is the subject of the documentary film “Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass.” For her dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for managing to survive on her own apart from any academic institution, she has earned the distinction “Queen of the Small Presses.” Perhaps it was Robert Frost who helped launch her lifetime of poetry when in her childhood he complemented her poetry. She has also been praised by Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as “a modern Emily Dickinson.”


Read 3 poems from Lyn below. Originally featured online in Scrambler (Issue 13, December 2007).



April 25



the pear, swollen

with rain


not the sharp scent,

sweat of wild apricot


but floating ghost trees,

boughs in the distance


the night’s darlings.


Snow that hovers

at the edge,


your memory



Green Fringe



each day, pale

green camouflages

branches, a lace

birds soon

could nest in.

Only the late

maple’s bare,

Christmas lights

dangling. Some where the beaver

is plotting, geese

nest in tall grass.

Think of 3 things

to be happy for

he said, I’ll

call at noon

to check



High Heels



They’re like wanting to

keep a man, keep one

on ice for sometime

later, there like a dress

3 sizes too small I know

I’ll slide into. Hell, I

could wear it now and

let it hug my ass so tight

you’ll want to tear if

off me. In two houses:

boots under the bed, S

& M boots one English

professor called them,

boots that tilt my pelvis

forward, toward you. I

want to strut thru Dupont

Circle, black boots a

dominatrix might wear,

stab heels you’d have to

be afraid of me in. My

mother wore spike heels

into her 70’s, up Beacon

Hill and over at least one

man’s heard who still

saw her as twenty. When

I’ll put those boots on

you’ll never believe I was

not always in shape. I’ll

out strut any Barbarella

or Barbie. Men in cars

will run into each other,

the legs the last thing to go

and I’m not ready yet

for any one way ticket



Scrambler 2003-