The French school

The time I kissed you in the city night

The hours were short and subdued

Your lips were salty

My throat was sad

---

She was walking down that aisle

Between the Street of Stores and the Street of Banks

Lucie’s salon

Was a Kaaba for beauty

An area between the two ranges

----

Gorgeous blonde like a nation gone by Pure as the minds of the ancients

Paris alone

Scatters philosophy on girls’ skirts

You walk confidently on the gym paths

Like a historical coincidence

You made the affricative letter among the Arabs

A square where bodies drink

Morning exercises

Lynn Strongin is a Pulitzer Prize nominee in poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment Creative Writing Grant, nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes, Lynn Born in NYC at the end of the dirty thirties, she grew up in an artistic Jewish home in New York during the war. Earliest studies were in musical composition as a child and at The Manhattan School of Music. Took a BA at Hunter college, MA at Stanford University graduation as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Lived in Berkeley during the vibrant sixties where she worked for Denise Levertov and took part in many peace demonstrations. Poems in forty anthologies, fifty journals; Poetry, New York Quarterly. Forthcoming work in Poetry Flash and Otoliths. Canada is her second home. The late Hugh Fox said Strongin is the “most exciting poet writing today.’ Danielle Ofri wrote to her, “you tear the veil off that mysterious disease polio.” Strongin’s work has been translated into French and Italian. Her forthcoming book is THE SWEETNESS OF EDNA She recently received a ten-thousand dollar Emergency George Woodcock Grant for Writers from The Writers’ Trust of Canada and has been nominated for LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING in British Columbia, and an HONORARY DOCTORATE from The Manhattan School of music. Her latest book is KIOSK (Erbacce press). She is currently working on a new book of poems ALTO SONNETS: for a dark time.

Available at: https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/lynn-strongin

Jordan Smith is the author of eight full-length books of poems, most recently Little Black Train, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Prize and Clare’s Empire, a fantasia on the life and work of John Clare from The Hydroelectric Press, as well as several chapbooks, including Cold Night, Long Dog from Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press. The recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill foundations, he is the Edward Everett Hale Jr., Professor of English at Union College.