Category: Andrea Lambert

The Dead

            My uncle’s text reads, “Grandma’s in the hospital. She broke her hip.” I rush immediately to her side. I know this could be the last time I see her alive. I treasure our caffeinated hospital visits. Six months of rehab institutions. Pureed peas. Grandma Virginia dies peacefully in her sleep in a nursing home.

            I inherit grandma’s vintage wardrobe. It amps up my queer femme sensibility. Hats with delicate netting. Lacy slips for nightwear. Fur stoles where the animal died pre-WWII. Pearl chokers. Silky handkerchiefs I began to carry in my purse. Scarves reminiscent of my San Francisco party girl youth. Every time I blend grandma’s retro with my Los Angeles widow’s weeds I feel both womanly spirits close to me.
            When my domestic partner was alive? She called me, “The femme-iest femme who ever femmed.” Five years after her death? I still wear her wedding ring. Loyal to her memory.

            Good Friday. Pale dawn light creeps through the blinds. I wear grandma’s lacy negliges. Her pink and black bakelite necklace. Ring of my lesbian ghost wife.

            I kneel at the altar in my witchcraft room. Surrounded by two circles of crystals. Circle of Major Arcana Tarot cards. I light incense before grandma’s black and white wedding photo. Light a candle by my domestic partner’s funeral portrait.

            “In the name of the guardian ghosts Virginia Garaventa and Katie Jacobson, I pray for an epiphany,” I say. Tea lights upon on the altar flash with flame. Faerie lights draped around homoerotic oil paintings flicker. The stick pentagram beneath the altar levitates. Touches the blessed crucifix from grandpa’s funeral. Jewelry of the dead heats my flesh.

            I know now what I must do. Live as a ghost of my former self. Erect monuments to the dead.

Bio: Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com

Infernal Fire

When the only life you know
Is broken.
Picture perfect
Manicured hedges
On the outside.

Nude madwoman
Whittled to bone hooks
Running rampant
Inside.

Driven to spew bile
On the page.
Driven by
An internal,
Infernal
Fire.

Slathered with coconut oil.
Performing Latin rituals
With my own bodily fluids
To ancient pagan Gods.
To little or no effect.

I silently scream
Outward
Online
To an indifferent world.

Take my meds
Three times a day,
Keeps the men
In white coats away.

Stay inside
Sober.
Celibate.
Like a good woman should.
So I have heard.
The scarlet letter is A.

From coke whore
To literary lesbian
To eccentric recluse.

I traded in frolics
For respectability.

Received
The dregs
Of coffee grounds
And cat shit.

So indoors.
Alone.
Craft dreams
Implausible
Of immortality.

Guardian ghosts,
Illusory,
We ride at dawn
Into the abyss.

Bio: Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com

Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com

Alone in the Tower

        I live in a castle in the sky. The House of the Rising Sun. No men are serviced here. I only live out my days alone. In an ivory tower. My moon-colored bob too short, to let down. 

	I am not interested in men. Only a woman. Who is dead. I still wear her wedding ring. Diamonds on my hand. I am alone in grief.

	Once we ate strawberries. Wasabi peas mixed with kisses. She. My domestic partner. My wife. Taken too young at twenty-seven. By her own hand. She took all of my psych meds. Left me alone. It is no wonder I am poisoned. For further love. My heart shattered.

	That is what comes after being widowed, correct? I wait to die. Between these walls. Like a queer Miss Havisham. When’s the special day? Death is always a surprise. I will wait.

	When my ghost wife comes. In her black Louis Verdad wedding gown. Black veiled hat. To carry me away. I shall go willingly. Peacefully. For only then will I be free. Of this worm like meat tube. I must feed and toilet. All for naught. I attend to the needs of the body. Because I must go on. 

	I am too cowardly to hasten to process. Of waiting. For death. I lie in stasis. In wait. In this locked tower. No air comes in. Only bursts of electricity. Flaming sparks. Will explode.

Don’t Fear the Witch

            I do not fear a witch will come knocking at my door. With a poison apple treat. For I am the witch. With evil eye charm. Hidden on my porch. Shun that house in old Reno. Called the House of the Rising Sun. As the old song goes. For I am shunned. Alone. Both by choice and circumstance.

            Everyone in Nevada is carrying a gun. So I hear. I cannot mix with the populace. I am sorry. This world? This gun-happy silver state? Is not safe for me. I don’t want to die. Not yet. To know my phases of misery, psychosis and manic joy? One would to seek to end the cycle. I fear. As a public service. To the taxpayer. For I cannot keep it light. Think positive. At the slightest provocation; the biggest little panic attack.

            I practice witchcraft. Alone. In a room in my house. Inside sacred geometry lines. Of rose quartz. Broken jewelry. Tarot cards. Is magic real? Will. Salt. Stones. Baby tooth of my childhood mouth. Nail clippings. Candles carved with runes. Menstrual blood of my barren womb. Sometimes spells work. Or don’t. I have only been six years at the craft. I know not how many more years. It will take. To master the impossible.

            Morbid play, or is it the way? I prevaricate. Between doubt and devout. I know naught.

            Writing. Art. Witchcraft. Exercises in futility. Against the inevitable. Death.

            The only poison apple is in my heart. I barricade it. To wait. For the one I once loved and lost.

Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com

A Waiting Lament

I haven’t slept in days
To stay accessible.
Agreeable.
Dressed in normal clothes.
Ready to answer the door.
Unlock things as needed.
Cooperate.

Not conjuring Hecate and Dionysus
In a circle of crystals and cards.
Or in a medicated sleep
of death
For twenty hours.
Or exorcist crab-walking
Drenched in coconut oil
To touch each door of the house
With my bare foot.

I am not a real person with real problems.
I am an emaciated glamour phantasm.
Reclusive enough to be imaginary.
With hair the color of the moon.
I live scarcely tolerated
At the fringes of society.
I don’t matter.
I am hardly even real.
I am hardly even alive.  


Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com

Border Crossing by Andrea Lambert 

Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Andrea Lambert