CNF: Not All Words Taste Like Prayer
by Lynne Jensen Lampe
Split dry pods, remove seeds. Knife their hard covering & soak overnight. Set a watch o Lord. Moonflower vines scaffold the porch beam & railing. A backyard baptism, hot tub instead of the River Jordan. Hands push me under. Words flood in—Jesus, scotch & Mama. I keep my eyes closed, afraid to see God & remember shame. I am someone whose mother twice tried to drown her.
Buds unfurl at dusk. White blossoms glow—toxic, not deadly. Set a watch o Lord. I’m twelve, maybe younger. Mama & I stop washing dishes, twirl round & round, sing nonsense & giggle. Dad can’t see my happy. A month later, I pass through locked steel doors to bright tile & fluorescent lights & Mama chain-smoking menthols on a psych ward. Set a watch o Lord. Her roommate dies & Mama sleeps next to the corpse. No one finds the body till morning.
Scents of honey & vanilla tickle the air, fragrant as my inner wrist after caress. Blooms sweeten the night, spiral shut at dawn. In college I call Mama & we laugh so long I forget sorrow. Then she asks if I have sex, if I feel she pushes me. Men rush to answer. Hips unfurl—I scaffold other bodies while scared of my own, trade my happy for good. Set a watch o Lord. I use drugs to slip borders, realize only later my mind can push me under. I am someone whose mother twice tried to drown her.
Lynne Jensen Lampe’s debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022), a 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award winner and finalist for the 8th Annual McMath Book Award, concerns motherhood and mental illness. Her poems appear in Stone Circle Review, Rise Up Review, THRUSH, Yemassee, and elsewhere. She edits academic writing, reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and lives with her husband and two dogs in Columbia, MO. https://lynnejensenlampe.com or https://linktr.ee/lynnejensenlampe for socials.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Not All Words Taste Like Prayer”? This poem started in July 2018 with a ramble about women and water. A few months later in a long-form class, I scavenged the free write, choosing lines about my baptism and my mother’s action for a multi-section poem, including Bible-verse fragments and something about water and Mama in each part. The next several years the poem cycled through feedback, revision, submission, and rejection. I dropped a section. Added the moonflower vine image, though in relation to my husband and not my mother. Tried a different title: “God Started the Conversation, Mama Ended It.” My sense is I couldn’t face the truths the poem needed to tell. Finally, in April 2024, it all clicked.
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