by Paula J. Lambert
It’s all just a little too on-the-nose. Today,
the duckling floating in the reflecting pool—
as if the algae weren’t its own metaphor,
and the peeling paint, American Flag Blue.
The memes came quickly, the Rothko references,
dark humor that, for us, lets off a little steam
but does nothing for the actually dead duck
who had no way of knowing what an idiom is,
the meaning of metaphor, the swampy weight
of prophecy. Lame duck. Sitting duck.
Duck, dead in the brackish waters of ’Merica,
the good ol’ US of A, a country of promises
never realized, not fully, a country never once
able to reflect on its faults. So maybe
that’s the metaphor this time, refusing to see
what we really are: Ugly. Unwilling to change.
Paula J. Lambert Paula J. Lambert has published five full-length poetry collections including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) and six chapbooks including Sinkhole (Bottlecap Press 2025). Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and her mentorship has been recognized by PEN America. A strong supporter of the intersection of poetry and science, she lives in Columbus with her husband Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist.
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