Riot the Sky You’ve Tasted
You know somethingof trouble and revolutions,
gasoline and spectacle.
Abandon law to whirlwind,
lock fire.
Knot of jealous burning,
audit the ordinary
who want violence to swell
morning. Reach for worry.
Push into the strange
walk to undoubt.
Forget.
Forget.
Walk to undoubt,
push into the strange
morning. Reach for worry.
Who wants violence to swell?
Audit the ordinary
knot of jealous burning.
Lock. Fire.
Abandon law to whirlwind
gasoline. Spectacle
of trouble and revolutions,
you know something.
*Found poem sourced from The Case of the Smoking Chimney, by Erle Stanley Gardner.
Slush Fund
after Chase Berggrun, Battery Park in Winter
Forget the sun ever sunned. Drifting white noise from a small heater fills my box of an office and I barely hear life—paws thrump across carpet, metal tags clink, radio murmurs Mozart. On the windowsill, the mask I made from paper pulp in third grade screams its silent scream, orange mouth always open. I feel neither here nor there, yet now and then I exist. I know I do. I know. I know self as unsettled ash, await forgiveness for being a child of fire. My voice is loud as snow on days without wind. If I give away silence, I don’t want it back.
Lynne Jensen Lampe’s debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022), an Eric Hoffer winner and McMath finalist, concerns motherhood and mental illness. Recent publications include The Kenyon Review and Okay Donkey. She will be among twenty poets (including Dana Levin, Jennifer Maritza McCauley) featured in a Missouri series of Poet Baseball Cards and accompanying curriculum. She edits academic writing, works at a bookshop and reads for Tinderbox. https://lynnejensenlampe.com
Art Works: “The Riot”, “The Doll” visual poem collages by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2026
