O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Americana
Lynsey France
Home, Again
To explore or download a close reading of this poem, click HERE.
Snow melts rural dumps hiding out in the backyards of highways
in bypass, with a lonely vendors mall I saw futures in the baby clothes with stains, priced for the same value of antlers shed, a point on them broken, full of missing narrative.
Winter grew
the hills brown with them–and I wanted to dye my hair new–to die, be told what God is and know there is no man
that resurrects the way alternatives do.
How there is a mutt buried beneath an overgrown patch of solid earth with a rubber duck nearing the same color of ‘smudged’
and if you listen to the wind
whistling blankness in the can you wouldn’t think it’s litter if you knew the name it once called home–the pity there on the ground, limb-like roots sprawled out in welcome
–a storage world the robin weeps on, it says I am still not your mother
but I can hold your body as mine like the clam bringing the pearl from a language grave; a tongue, the cold underneath where we’re not supposed to breathe
but swallow
the pool out of it–and try, against the thawing
of memory’s bloodstream, not to let it sink us.
About the writer:
Lynsey France is a young writer and textile artist living in Kentucky where she was born. Her work, whether physical or word form, resonates from the inspiration of what home brings within both one’s body and one’s surroundings.
Image: A View of Spring (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
O:JA&L’S BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
Click on the titles below to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks in the O:JA&L Masters Series.
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Tom Hazuka on Flash Fiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
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