Amy Lambert

Amy Lambert

My ankles and big toe sore from the chapulas (flip-flops). Walking in the heat around the block, the shade of neem and acacia, an occasional dog scratching his flees under the childrens play ground bars, I'm thinking about the southern red dirt I soiled my childhood clothes, plucked from the ground in the hot afternoon.

P&P Poem

Singing the Humid Delhi Songs

Lights dim in the Delhi heat, an inspired women's voice (traditional music mix) blares from the music system a speak blown, ceiling fans spinning to the voices and drums.

Maya is watching little fingers eating strawberry jam with dah hee in tallis (steel plates with wonderful inche high ridges so the food is always kept on the plate when eating with your hands).

I'm listening for the sabsee walla calling the morning to his fresh vegetables wheeled to the gate but it's already dark and the nights are as black as the sea.

Open the car door, the heat like a furnace rushes across my face, the smell is so familiar, the plastics in the hot sun melting. The car fits like a small fist in the traffic, through the holes that buses and rickshaws leave at corners. I clutch my right hand as the car swerves and the cow chews her cud across the intersection, his wife sitting on the scooty side saddle, the sound of car horns like a conversation.

I dream that evening I'm swimming for the first time in a pool of warm water, cold water swept up from the bottom I can't reach.

We're out of reach but I'm smiling the weight of the water carries me, the sun burning my cheeks.

Amy Lambert

so I cut the sound and divide it into five pieces:
three pieces bring me to the east, west and center coast line, two pieces I save for you

P&P Poem

Counting Days

Today, the day after you slipped away from me
like a seed bouncing past three feet of duft,
the waves' pounding continues to wake rain,
and I find ways to throw the clothes down harder,
the shower door harder, even the brushing is harder.
Wind blows me around, soaks,
the water holes dancing to the tension
of sand and concrete
wet, air slaps at the glass pane's shudder-

so I cut the sound and divide it into five pieces:
three pieces bring me to the east, west and center coast line,
two pieces I save for you, many days away
from candy cities, fruit juice and aeroplane wheels.

Amy Lambert

Penny reeds, a spiders nest, abandoned and dry, steel threads of glass roped and tied...

P&P Poem

Oregon Campsite

Penny reeds, the tallest tree in the world,
I will have my oatmeal in a cup
with cherries, with frothing hot water-
Enough to be strong, to hold you
to me like the first baby
born of soft white white light.
And a fire between us.

Coleman stove, kettle kettle of honey tea
and stories thicker than glue, in the morning
your body will remind me of the earth.
Penny reeds, a spiders nest, abandoned and dry,
steel threads of glass roped and tied
like a line where I hang out clothes to dry,
a breeze that's wistful.

Amy Lambert

my fingers still sticky
from nudging them into the dark walls of mud...

P&P Poem

Planting

The sun, that first spoonful of hot soup
settles into my stomach,
thermos hung over the long bench.
I sit, watching points of light
where the tiny pink and yellow flags mark each
planting, long lines of roots holding them down,
my fingers still sticky
from nudging them into the dark walls of mud-
where others will follow like weeds sprouting fast
in the serpentine sun, on my back,

where others will urge the color blue from sage,
the dark green from cypess shaking,
the purples from needle grasses singing through their straws

at the edge of a flooded lake
that pulls its taffy water from corner to corner.

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P&P: RadiKahl Poetry and Prose
www.kahl.net/poetry

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