R.J. Lambert
R.J. Lambert (he, him, his) is a queer writer, runner, and cat dad in Charleston, SC. He was chosen by Kaveh Akbar to receive the 2021 Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry from New Letters and is nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize by The Worcester Review. Recent poems are featured or forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Denver Quarterly, The Ilanot Review, and Yalobusha Review, and his debut poetry collection, Mind Lit in Neon, is newly available from Finishing Line Press. R.J. teaches writing at the Medical University of South Carolina and can be found at @SoyRJ.
Lethologica
My verbs start
wanting more stresses,
some nouns to be held,
some little preposition.
In short, my sounds
are out of practice.
My words are not
infinite, my word is
what’s lacking.
The answer is
fractured from asking.
A “but” holds back
the “ifs” & “ands” &
utters nothing. Sometimes,
the silence sounds
like sirens. Sometimes,
the quiet conjugates me
like a verb.
Lethonomia
An ambulance premeditates
among some numbered impossibilities,
which all the world’s
behavior seconds & approves.
Keeping to himself,
his distaste for taste proliferates.
Though recognizable, flowers
are anything but floral,
another case of parts, together,
amounting to the less-than-ideal.
The streets are safe & soundless.
(To say there is no sound
implies, also, a want of music.)
No sooner does he notice this,
the violin against the brick
produces notes he notices
in intervals of fifths.