This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Talk Smack to a Hurricane by Lynne Jensen Lampe (IceFloe Press 2022).
Twining the Darkness
Evil splits its skin
to open both eyes
A clot of black hair
floats the water
I wake to breathe, mutter
a prayer until sleep returns
Two men lay hands
on the woman behind me
Please make it quick.
Her voice stains stones
She folds & unfolds
They pull her teeth
& my jaw seizes, dreams
pave my temple with pain
Who sows the field
this house belongs to?
Fears disrobe at dawn
saunter naked in the sun
taunt me with false good-
byes until new sleep
paints Nehemiah 9:12
behind my closed lids
Pillar of cloud
pillar of fire
embers in the night
Heads like small moons
seek the water-bringer
in a dry riverbed
Open both eyes.
Please make it quick.
Lynne Jensen Lampe’s debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022), a 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award winner and finalist for the 8th Annual McMath Book Award, concerns motherhood, mental illness, and antisemitism. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Lips Poetry Journal, Stone Circle Review, Rise Up Review, THRUSH, Yemassee, and elsewhere. She edits academic writing, reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and lives with her husband and two dogs in Columbia, MO, where she’s a core member of Dame Good Writers.
Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.
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