Lyn Lifshin
	56 North Pleasant Street   past the beads hung over the door, rose light floods the back room where the safe is, my grandmother with a sick baby crying, tapping the pane under apple leaves   My mother is 8, her new doll’s head lies smashed on the floor. She is hating her brother. Spirea covers the sidewalk. She is furious at her brother and runs into the hot stove. Her   grandmother gets  a cold knife. My mother screams, is sure the knife is a weapon. She is wild to claw her brother. My great grandmother will die without replacing the broken head tho   she promises this until her last month in the blue bed where I will try to sleep when my mother goes to have my sister and won’t tho my grandmother sings   White Cliffs of Dover  and the apples are like magic green eggs in July light behind the house Estelle, Star Stones That summer on the sea porch, Winthrop, was it July? My sister crying. Estelle, even your name a bracelet, star stones   stars I put on and let the dark waves crash on the bed. We were drifting into your 19 year old life, imagining your boyfriends on the other edge of your skin. Nipples on the beach, your   tan. You brought blue bowls of raspberries, cream fingers. Estelle, Estelle, you wanted to be what your name was and sang weekends on the radio, sang brushing my hair in the bathroom light. The white tiles cool. My sun burnt skin. You said   you’d never stop singing, wouldn’t marry and hummed something that both our fathers heard on that boat from Lithuania, heard in a strange tongue. We couldn’t understand you said but would later and how you’d dance as those children had. Black pines.   Russia glowing in the sea. Night. We were wrapped in cats and velvet. Moon on the stones. you told us of dreams hidden in the stone, got out that—I remember the gold around the latch—   jewel box, it was what went with wishes in old books and moonstones. Dream fur. Choose one for later.   The smoothest stones.  Your long thick hair. Goodnight. Your name a charm still though you married in some split level, your throat stuffed with china and none of the things you promised would happen happened