This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Talk Smack to a Hurricane by Lynne Jensen Lampe (IceFloe Press 2022).
Whale Foam, Sea Honey
Clouds bruise the night,
defile every map the stars
scribble on open palm.
I lose direction, hardly
see the maw of indecision
before it wraps me in teeth
& tongue, traps me
in another skin. I breathe
air sour as surrender
in this cavern of bone
unflensed. If only the moon
flowers bloomed in this
darkness to light
the way to change—
Cobble a raft of squid beaks
& seaweed & slip
into ocean where salt cleanses,
sun hardens, wind blows
sweet instead of foul.
Shed the corset of control,
breathe sea-gold upon the shore.
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.
