Tag: Paula J. Lambert

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023 ~

1. Abby E. Murray
2. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
3. Betsy Mars
4. Donna Hilbert
5. Linda Laderman
6. Alison Luterman
7. Julie Weiss
8. Robbi Nester
9. Roseanne Freed
10. Karen Paul Holmes
11. Heather Swan
12. Timothy Green
13. James Diaz
14. Jane Edna Mohler
15. John Amen
16. Barbara Crooker
17. Jim Daniels
18. Susan Vespoli
19. Sean Kelbley
20. Susan Zimmerman
21. Kip Knott
22. Jennifer Garfield
23. Margaret Dornaus
24. Paula J. Lambert
25. Gail Thomas

~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of April 2023 ~

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  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Ambition
  2. Donna Hilbert – Bad Weather
  3. Jim Daniels – Five Poems
  4. Linda Laderman – Burnt Toast
  5. Robbi Nester – The Inheritance
  6. Betsy Mars – Leveling
  7. Bella Barbera – Five More Minutes For One More Lifetime 
  8. Paula J. Lambert – Spring
  9. Carol Parris Krauss – Pretty Bottles All in a Row
  10. John Amen – The 80s

Spring by Paula J. Lambert

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Spring

The strange beast of the night
has retreated, hackberry down,
no more damage than that
and the echoing tinnitus you woke with,
b flat, constant, dull.

The wind’s wild paw—
which took out a city west of here—
left the fence intact. Small favor.
Elsewhere, children are dead.
The storm, sure. The anguished shooter.
Pockets of silence everywhere,
in the aftermath. You calculate:

chainsaw, chipper, enough mulch
to cover the peonies, the lilacs,
the hydrangea and rose of Sharon
sure to follow.

*

Paula J. Lambert has published 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 and two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is also a visual artist, small-press publisher, and nascent literary translator.

Splendor by Paula J. Lambert

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Splendor

The fig wasp, born pregnant,
offers herself back to the fig
and dies. My every day feels like this:
clambering out of my dreams, laden,
flitting about the world
collecting what the earth and air offer—
sunlight, the vast blues and linen whites of sky
(some days, only moist air and gray
all around me), the pain of purpled iris
exploding from the tips of their slender green spears.

I never asked for this life, what it gives,
what it takes away,
its every moment of cruelty
and joy. Still, I move through the day
greedy with want,
aching with what must be love—
what other word for this pull to return
to the slim cavern of sleep that,
entering, takes my wings
and shreds my senses
into the crazed stomping
of my daily death, letting go
of everything this day has burdened me with
and sleeping—truly, like the dead—
then waking, laden with more.

*

Paula J. Lambert has published 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. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist.