Most of the poems
about shopping were nostalgic. Several poems recounted experiences from
childhood – shopping with Mom or Grandma, or with an older cousin who bought
the poetic persona two packages of Beatles Bubble Gum. One poem was about digging
though the sales bins in competition with other women; another ended with a
person in grief in a supermarket. John J. Gordon is awarded an Honorable
Mention for his poem, “Shopping,” about being dragged along with his mother who
liked to take the train into Chicago for the whole day—most of it spent at
Marshall Field’s checking out women’s clothing and accessories, fine china and
fancy glassware, which his mother could not afford.
The winning poem
is by Paula J. Lambert:
Breathing In This World
The scent of you rises suddenly as I sort
through Women’s Long Sleeve Blouses.
It is surely you, clear as day, wanting to
be
known. (This is why my sister won’t shop
for thrift store clothes: dead men’s
clothes,
she calls them.) But here you are &
here I am,
breathing you in: Smoker. The scent is
strong,
& I know at once that you are strong. I
think
of smoke, of fire, of all the fires burning
all around us. I think of wanting, of
longing,
desire, of all that comes to us on the
inhale,
all the tiny particles of one another. I
breathe in
the smoke you once held in your lungs &
we
are bonded. I have taken in the scent of
others
here, their soaps and their perfumes, I
have
taken in the tall woman beside me, who
watches me closely, who reeks of me finding
what she has not yet found. In the next
aisle,
two men: one releasing anger, his breath
a slender thread I’d like to pull, the
other
singing softly What I Like about
You and
I can’t help but sing myself. The store is
bright
with the promise of Being Here Now &
when
I leave Women’s Long Sleeve Blouses,
I take you with me, past Toys, past
Furniture
teaming with life, and we stop to look at
Lamps.
It’s not light I need. I want just the
right shade
for a sky-blue lamp I’d bought at another
thrift
store, one more thing passed from hand to
hand,
from time to time & aren’t we all that,
dear,
living or dead? Aren’t we all light passed
from
hand to hand? Aren’t we all the lingering
smoke
of each other’s fires?
~ Paula J. Lambert
Paula J. Lambert is a literary and visual artist from Columbus, Ohio. Author of The Ecstasy of Wanting, The Sudden Seduction of Gravity, and The Guilt That Gathers, she is a Residency Artist for the Ohio Arts Council Arts Learning Program and past recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. She has published widely in journals and anthologies and taught numerous workshops and seminars on the writing process. Lambert also owns Full/Crescent Press, a small but growing publisher of poetry books and broadsides.
Writer: paulajlambert(dot)com
Full/Crescent Press: fullcrescent(dot)com
Facebook: Paula J. Lambert, Literary and Visual Art Full/Crescent Press
Instagram: pjlpoet, pjlcardboard
© Wilda Morris
(Paula J. Lambert retains copyright on her poem)
