WHAT SETTLES WHEN WE LAY OUR BODIES DOWN TO REST

by Paula J. Lambert

Source: The New York Times

Really, it’s just the claggy kind of snot struggling

to decide if it wants to stay low in your chest—

 

where your heart beats and every breath passes

through—or if, rising, clinging to the last breath,

 

it has the strength to finally release itself

to the world. We know by now what can travel 

 

on the tiny particles of our gasping exhalations: 

disease, devotion, the promise that death is no end. 

 

We might wish otherwise, drifting in and out 

of these strange dreams of drowning. We know

 

what happened in Nepal, North Carolina, Texas. 

We all might be called mystics when, prone, 

 

our bodies wrestle with desire, each wobble of faith 

in our resolve to go on a little death of its own.  

Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has published eleven collections of poetry including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig 2025) and Sinkhole (Bottlecap 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

SO MAYBE / THAT’S THE METAPHOR THIS TIME

by Paula J. Lambert

It’s all just a little too on-the-nose. Today,  

the duckling floating in the reflecting pool—

 

as if the algae weren’t its own metaphor,

and the peeling paint, American Flag Blue. 

 

The memes came quickly, the Rothko references,

dark humor that, for us, lets off a little steam 

 

but does nothing for the actually dead duck

who had no way of knowing what an idiom is, 

 

the meaning of metaphor, the swampy weight

of prophecy. Lame duck. Sitting duck. 

 

Duck, dead in the brackish waters of ’Merica, 

the good ol’ US of A, a country of promises

 

never realized, not fully, a country never once

able to reflect on its faults. So maybe 

 

that’s the metaphor this time, refusing to see

what we really are: Ugly. Unwilling to change. 

Paula J. Lambert Paula J. Lambert has published five full-length poetry collections including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) and six chapbooks including Sinkhole (Bottlecap Press 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and her mentorship has been recognized by PEN America. A strong supporter of the intersection of poetry and science, she lives in Columbus with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. 

ONE EYE, ALWAYS

by Paula J. Lambert

Dame Maggie Smith died
the same night Hurricane Helene swept through
the American South, which means nothing
except that our hearts can be broken
so many different ways. Eight people died
in Acapulco from Hurricane John.
Eric Adams pleaded not guilty
while the still-rushing waters flooded 
through Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a break 
from all the news elsewhere. That’s how we roll, 
unable to keep more than three or four or five 
catastrophes foremost in our minds. Breaking news 
splinters our brains by the second: Gaza, Ukraine, 
the guy who wants to be president again 
finagling himself into the worst of it,
one outrageous claim after another
designed to keep our tail lights spinning: 
T-boned by the news. Whiplashed 
while so many suffer the slings and arrows 
of the most benign living: sprained wrists, 
a broken tooth, kids not doing their homework, 
pot roast simmered dry when Mother forgot, again, 
she had something on the stove. Who’s taking her in—
or shouldering the blame for sending her away?
When the flood waters rise (they’re always rising)
we tend to what we must. When the waters recede,
we turn to the Dames, the Denzels,
to Sandra Bullock and the Great British bakers
to keep ourselves going, one step at a time,
one eye, always, toward the drought.

Paula J. Lambert of Columbus, Ohio, has published several collections of poetry including As If This Did Not Happen Every Day (Sheila-Na-Gig 2024) and Uncertainty (The Only Hope We Have) (Bottlecap 2023). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

JUST AS THE BIRDS, DISTRACTED

by Paula J. Lambert

Most nights this week, there will be more birds in the air above

this country than people in beds down below.” —Josh Sokol

 

Just as the birds, distracted by light

that splits the star they follow into sparks

and mirrors so they never see the towers

that reach out to kill them, just as the birds,

 

so entranced by needs they cannot explain

that they propel themselves steadfastly

forward through all the wildfires we set 

for them (if they recognize their own 

plummeting numbers when they emerge 

from the smoke, they don’t show it, 

they keep flying) just as the birds 

soar even through their own sleep as, 

one by one by one, they die of thirst 

or starvation or exhaustion, falling into fields 

and ditches and sidewalks, mountain peaks

and seldom-seen valleys, just as they 

keep going, season after season, year after 

year, eon after unfathomable eon, so we 

sleep through it all in our beds below, 

writhing maybe through tangles of sheets 

and the existential threat we’ve made

of our lives—we who’ve lived long enough 

to multiply every problem we inherited, 

who’ve ignored or angrily explained away 

the desperate patterns of our own migration—

but sleeping, blithely unwilling to do more

than worry while, awake, we grab our keys 

and cameras and binoculars and go,

 

to the marshes, waterways and wild places

still left, still untrampled, still—unbeknownst

to us—part of the twisted dreams and difficult

truths we rarely remember, come morning. 

Paula J. Lambert has authored several collections of poetry including The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing (FutureCycle 2022) and How to See the World (Bottom Dog 2020). Awarded PEN America's L'Engle-Rahman Prize for Mentorship, Lambert's poetry and prose has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes.