I recall the day she tore through me, squalling anger long into the tiny night. Later I found dried blood under her tired fingernails, As if she’d dug her long way out. Now she’s three and once again demanding Independence — her fingers work the buttons of her pajama top, slap my helping hand. She insists on cutting her own fruit with a dull knife, sawing melon and bitter green banana. Smiling at her messy work, I yearn for a slip of the blade, a slice of her thumb and a bright bloom of blood. I’d take it to my mouth, pressed hard against my teeth. The tongue remembers well the first taste, keeps it in the back of the throat. Reprinted with permission from The LA Review, Spring 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Jen Lambert

PHOTOGRAPH by Jen Lambert

I’m a young boy, still milk-fed and full of nothing but hands and knees. My sister leans into me, her hair holding what’s left of summer light. She doesn’t know yet the raw capability of man, the places on the body where bruises can bloom like African Violets, that hair can be yanked from the head like straw from the mouths of mares, so swiftly they still chew, teeth striking teeth. She doesn’t know yet that the body can be taken too, in such a way that when you get it back you don’t recognize it, and you walk around, rattling inside it like a seed, waiting for someone to split you open and replant what’s left. Reprinted with permission from Two Review, April 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Jen Lambert

WE WELCOME THE FIRST FEW LADYBUGS by Jen Lambert

We scoop them from sills, eager to let them crawl the terrain of our cupped palms, keep them in jars, add stiff blades of grass, capfuls of water, handfuls of dandelion. But then we notice more, clinging to walls, edging doorframes, windows. We find them in bed sheets. the coffee pot, the baby’s round fist. We spray poison till red-orange bodies litter the carpet, some round and red as moonseed berries, some rolled on their backs , black legs laced together, sheer wings folded tight inside shells tipped like tiny, overflowing cups. Reprinted with permission from Two Review, April 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Jen Lambert

TEACHING RUBY THE J by Jen Lambert

She’s building you paper kingdoms today, practical shrines, as she practices your figure in the alphabet over and over in wobbly orange crayon. I show her your form in strict black ink, and I notice your rigidity — steady straight top soldered to your ramrod spine. But your curved belly reveals you were meant to cradle things: water, sweet apples, the tiny buttons of a spine holding together a whole dark universe. Reprinted with permission from Raleigh Review, November 1, 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Jen Lambert

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