Rattle: Poetry: Recent Episodes
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Abby E. Murray
HELLO, I AM NOT A SOLDIER
And yet I wear caution like a uniform now, pulling myself into its rough sleevesand old boots each morning before I even think of coffee or how the me who returns to this bed will not be the me who left it. There is no flag, mark, pattern or pin I can carry to convince a person of what I will or will not do, who I love or what I care about. If I am kind, I must prove it by risking kindness. I ration false comfort by knowing it has never not been this way: each day armed with infinite opportunities to fail, and the chance of failure’s alternative always racked like an ordinary bullet within tens of thousands of identical seconds. Wherever I go, I cling to my hope like a weapon I have been trained to love. —from Poets Respond
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Abby E. Murray: “As the next administration unveiled its picks for senior leadership and cabinet positions this week, I was especially struck by the terrible choice for a defense secretary: a man who has a history of demonizing any life that doesn’t closely mirror his own. Most of my daily work involves examining and bridging the canyons that divide military & civilian populations, and I am imagining how much harder it’s going to be next year. I wrote this poem as a way to connect my pacifist life to the lives of service members in danger. Happy veterans day indeed.” (web)
Related* “Memorial Day 2015” by Abby E. Murray * “How to Be Together” by Abby E. Murray * “Free Shipping” by Abby E. Murray
Jim Daniels
THE DARK MIRACLE OF INSOMNIA
Chimayó is home of the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas. Local residents walk miles, often barefoot, to visit the sanctuary… Many take away “tierra bendita” (holy dirt) from a hole in the floor, claiming miraculous healings. Sometimes referred to as “Lourdes of America,” the golden adobe church with its twin bell towers attracts close to 300,000 visitors a year.
for Demetria Martinez
She handed me a baggie of holy dirt—a gift from a new friend. Back at the motel,it reminded me of various drugs I’d ingestedin various ways. I wondered if airport securitywould sniff it out the next day. That nightin a curtain-less room, I watched darknessswallow the random lights of Albuquerquewhile the freeway whisper faded to a nearlyinaudible hiss. I could not sleep becausean alarm was set or I had eaten too muchor not enough or I hadn’t stretched or I was almostcold and faintly overheated, over-heartedwith longing for my family back in Pittsburgh,back in Detroit, back in Oshkosh, Wisconsinand Paw Paw, Michigan, and in the deep darkground or drifting forever away from me.The tremble of panic strummed taut stringstill all was rigid and brittle, the hair-line crack of sanity spreading with each blink,each heart thud, each dry swallow. Finally.I grabbed the baggie and spread the red dirtin an arc around my bed.I did not have pills of any kind. Cold turkeysgobbled at my sliding door, steaming the glass.I felt like I was spreading salt acrossthe icy sidewalk back in Pittsburghwhere my children slept, their soft breath holyas all get out. This is the part of the songwhere the gospel choir sways into action,kicks it into the high gear many of us die tryingto find, burning out the clutch of the heart,the soul, the faint smell of burning rubber,and we’re stranded forever.I woke up to the alarmof a truck beeping in reverseand morning’s definite light. When I rose,I wept at the faint red half-circle in the faded greencarpet. The smirking genie. The shameof the bargain. The broken hourglass.The wall of abandoned crutches.—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
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Jim Daniels: “I don’t get many poems out of being on the road giving poetry readings, but this is one of them. I think a lot of writers suffer from insomnia, but it’s not something we talk about a lot. I’ve always felt vaguely ashamed of having sleep problems. But, when you can’t sleep, what else can do you but write?” (web)
Related* “Prodigal Son Returns to Warren, Michigan” by Jim Daniels * “Lip Gloss, Belgium” by Jim Daniels * “The Grand Design” by Jim Daniels
Bob Lucky
PORTUGUESE LESSONS
When we retired, I told my wife if we’re going to live in a city, I want to be in the midst of it, not stuck in a high rise on the outskirts near a megamall. So,we found a small apartment on a run-down street in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Across the way is a grumpy seamstress, a florist with a permanentlymolting parakeet, and a barber, more about that later. On the corner: a café-bar, a butcher’s shop, and a dry goods store specializing in tablecloths, socks, and women’s underwear.My urban idyll, but the barbershop is a reminderthe sidewalk is always cleaner one block over.When it first opened, it was a 24-hour party until neighbors complainedand the police came round to explain the difference between a license for a barbershop and a disco, especiallythe hours of operation. After that the pool table arrived.It took months to block out the click-clack of billiard balls. I still have issues with the clientele, high school and college-age boys with a fondness for bad haircutshacky-sacking a football in the street and shouting their conversations, most of which are about pussy and beer. My Portuguese slang is getting better, but it’s not easyfinding the right conversation partner, even online.This afternoon, my nap ruined, I wanted to step out on the balcony in my wife’s panties and say, “Please shut the fuck up. We’re trying to have an orgy in here. I was about to cum on someone’s face, two faces, but you ruined my concentration.” Of course, I didn’t because I remembered that I too used to bean idiot and an asshole and didn’t need to prove it at my age.And my Portuguese isn’t that good.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
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Bob Lucky: “I love sound. I love languages, which may not be evident from the way I mangle them. For most of my adult life, I lived throughout Asia, from Japan to Saudi Arabia. And for a time in Ethiopia. Now I’m settled in northern Portugal. I’ve learned to get by. At my age, fluency is a rabbit I’ll never catch. This poem deals with that, obliquely. I suppose I write poetry to work on my English, and I’m pretty sure every word I use has been in someone else’s mouth before.”
Related* “Wouldn’t You Confess?” by Bob Lucky * “It Was Too Dark for a Light at the End of the Tunnel” by Bob Lucky * “Working with Ghosts” by Bob Lucky
Eric Kocher
MOUNTAIN LAKE
The next day I wake up and my wifeIs coming into the hotel roomAnd the first thing she tells me is that she foundA secret garden, which are her actual words,Where she sat and absorbed as much sunlightAs she could, and then the second thingShe tells me is that she is pregnant, again,That assuming nothing goes wrong,Our daughter, who is on the other sideOf the country, is going to be a big sister.I say I think I am still dreaming, probably,But not in that cliché senseOf life being somehow hazy or surreal,But rather that words she is saying,The order of them, seem more like somethingSomeone would say in a dream, Especially the secret garden thing,But minus me now saying That I felt like I was dreaming,Which is a near guarantee that I am awake. As we say this, I realize I had already knownOn some level but I had been trying to pretendLike I didn’t know, partly because I didn’t wantTo get my hopes up,And partly because I knew that when I actually knew it,When I knew it for realIt would lead me to knowing Too many other things,And then, when we knew it together, when we startedSaying it out loud, the meanings would snowballInto bigger meanings, and then we would Have to start making real decisions. First,We decide the best thing to do with this newInformation is to go for a hike, as we had planned,So, we drive to a trail called Mountain LakeWhich, we agreed, are two of the bestGeological features, independent of each other, So what better place could we be without compromise. After we decide this, all around us Are these dizzyingly old trees, western redcedar, Douglas fir, western hemlock, All climbing one, two hundred feetInto the air, and the air itself so very quiet,Soft almost, making space for whatever We have to say, which is a lot, so we say everything We can, starting with the obvious stuffLike who we think this new person might be,What we might call them,How tired everyone is going to be again,Before moving onto the other stuff,The fragility of it all, how the little patternsWe’ve managed to summon will change,That our daughter’s world Will simultaneously expand foreverAnd collapse inward, both a new galaxyAnd a black hole, and that neither of usKnow how to say any of this to her.Beside us, we can’t decide if the lake Is green or blue, nor what determines The greenness or blueness of any given lake.Its chemical composition, maybe,The algae and other organisms living in the lake,Their eating and shittingAnd synthesizing each other, maybe,The trees blanketing the surrounding mountains,How the light is refracting and diffusingAmong them reciprocally, maybe,Some or none or all of these things together.The guide on the whale-watching tourExplained that orcas live in matriarchal Societies, that they are among the few otherBeings on the planet who experience menopause,Which is important because it creates spaceFor matriarch to teach the new mothersAnd their babies how to hunt and play and be.Explained this way, everything seems very clear,As if we live within some order or logic that permeatesThe way that life unfolds, like we are surroundedAlways by helpful explanationsOf what it is we are doing here,If only we have the time and attentionTo understand them. When I ask my wife what kind of matriarchShe wants to be, she says a fancy oneWho surrounds herself with fancy things.I know that this isn’t what she means,But for a moment I feel very fancy, or that maybe I might one day be a fancier version of myself.The forest seems fancier, now,And the quiet air, and the mountain, and the lake.And I remember this pattern, too,That a small thing can radiate outward, changeEverything around it.My wife touches her hand to her stomachAnd says that this trip was supposed to be her breakFrom being a parent,And we keep climbing up along the ridgeUntil somewhere below usIs that other life we lived, so small now That it must have always been gone.—from Sky Mall
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
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Eric Kocher: “A little over ten years ago, my friend Mark made a joke. He said that I should try to be the first person to publish a poem in Sky Mall Magazine. There was something about shopping for the most inane, kitschy stuff on the planet while flying 30,000 feet above it, just to avoid a moment of boredom, that seemed to be the antithesis of poetry. The words “Sky Mall” got stuck in my head—lodged there. This is almost always how poems happen for me. Language itself seems to be in the way just long enough to build tension before it can open into a space that pulls me forward. These poems finally arrived while I was traveling, first alone, and then the following year with my wife, as a new parent in that hazy dream of the post-pandemic. Writing them felt like going on a shopping spree, of sorts, so I tried to let myself say yes to everything.”
Related* “Dispatches from the Dream of Personal Flight” by Eric Kocher * “Passenger Deck” by Eric Kocher * “Safety Features” by Eric Kocher
Susan Johnson
CRIBBAGE LESSONS
The summer Dad decided it was time I learned crib, counting fifteen two, fifteen four, I loved doing the sums in my head, tallying up the pairs, runs, as if life were arithmetic, which at six it was. Going into second grade, the owner of three hand-me-down bathing suits from one sister, two cousins, I went swimming five times a day and at the general store one mile away, bought a dime’s worth of penny candy from a woman who had to be a hundred. In four years mom would have her mastectomy; in ten she’d be dead. We didn’t know any of that then. Just that it all adds up until it doesn’t. Then you’re skunked. —from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
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Susan Johnson: “I spent my childhood being outside as much as possible and trying to solve the many puzzles that made up my life. I do the same as an adult, only now it’s language that I use to work through and understand what I encounter. I’m also more accepting when it doesn’t quite add up.”
Related* “Imagining Abraham” by Susan Comninos * “How Many Times” by Susan Sue * “Arc” by Jesse Bertron
Christine Rhein
POST-ELECTION ABECEDARIAN
America, a gleaming ship—mighty engines,billowing sails—the wind at our backs one minute, hurricanescareening toward us the next. And our captain-to-be, once again,does not call for All hands on deck!—alarm bells signalingEvery man for himself! Yes sir—women the first to befrightened now—new crewmen taking charge of the infirmaries,galleys, locking up their secret banquets, their fists proudly raised.How clever, some believe, the constant riggings—ropes tiedinto convoluted knots, and maps redrawn, based on codedjudgement. O say, can you see the country’s compasskeeps fogging—despite the talk of reading it clearly,letting faith lead us, even as the waters darken.Menacing—the threats we cannot see, the sharkish hunger,nets upon nets dragged across the evening news. We’re tiredof snagging only lies, of casting for giant truths, what with icebergsprimed to go on melting, and those at the helmquestioning the data—rising temperatures, no big deal!Rules of the sea, broken. In these stormy gales, our flagsnaps and frays, shackles clang, and the mastteeters—our nausea churning amid pledges of allegiance.Until January—beyond January—let us hold ourvessel safe, keep the cracks from spreading, work toweld, reweld, push onward. Afterall, our children needextra hope now, need a route out of the rage. Don’t most of usyearn for a buoyant voyage, for a way to stop our franticzigs and zags, to steer together, free ourselves to sail as one?—from Poets Respond
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Christine Rhein: “This poem, written in alphabetical order, is an attempt to confront the chaos that’s been promised, to hope that America’s voyage isn’t doomed, to hope that the planet isn’t doomed.” (web)
Related* “In Detroit, What Counts as Grace” by Christine Rhein * “Speaking in Code” by Christine Rhein * “On the Election” by Christine Potter
Sharon Ferrante
SIX SENRYU FOR EROTICA
my lover’s scent in the morning a wolf howls on his lap the bump and grind of the old truck romping on cut grass our green knees lobster dinner he licks the butter from my chin role-playing on the old piano a hard night I let him melt in my mouth —from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
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Sharon Ferrante: “I write poetry because the poem tells me to. It’s like a door I run through in the night: it’s always open, filled with chatter.”
Related* “Six Senryu from the Kitchen” by Sharon Ferrante * “Four Senryū” by Jeff Haas * “Five Senryū” by Timothy Liu
petro c. k.
HAIKU
it’s all overbut the countingdistant sirens —from Poets Respond
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petro c. k.: “As one who often writes haiku, it’s always a challenge to distill moments to its essence. When I was sitting with my thoughts, I heard sirens off in the distance, which captured the sense I had of melancholy, anxiety, and unknown dangers on the horizon.” (web)
Related* Haiku by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco * Haiku by Deborah P. Kolodji * Haiku by Joshua Eric Williams
Grace Bauer
OUR WAITRESS’S MARVELOUS LEGS
It’s men I’m prone to eye, but when she comesto take our order, I’m too distractedto think beyond drinks, too awedby the ink that garments her limbsto consider appetizers, much less entrees.It’s not polite to stare, I know,but the fact of her invites it.Why else the filigreed ankles,those Peter Max planets orbiting herleft shin, that Botticelli angel soaringjust below her right knee?She’s a walking illustration, adornedto amaze, yet as seemingly nonchalantas the homely white-sneakered HoJo girlI myself once was, describing the specialsof the day, listing our options for dressings,then scribbling the choices we makeon her hand-held pad.My companion can’t help wondering how farup the ante goes, says he bets there’s a piercingor two at the end of the, so to speak, line.I’m more inclined to ponder motivationand stamina—how long and how muchshe suffered to make herself a work of art.For I have no doubt, she sees her own fleshas a kind of canvas. Her body as frameand wall and traveling exhibition,a personal statement on public display.Same could be said of the purple tightsI wear beneath my frilly black skirt—too bold a choice for some people’s tastes,but not a permanent commitment.Clothes make the woman morethan the man, despite the familiar adage,and body as both self and other isa contradiction we live with, however comfortably—or not—we grow into our own skins.I’ll admit part of what I feelis admiration, even envy.Whatever she may ever becomein this world, she will never again be drab.She’ll wear this extravaganceof color and form as she graysinto more—or less—wisdom.But tonight she simply performsher duty as server, courteous and efficientas she does what she can to satisfythe hunger we walked in with, but notthe hunger the sight of herinspires us to take home.—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
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Grace Bauer: “I am currently bent on surviving another winter in Nebraska, which might explain the longing for otherwise and elsewhere that keeps cropping up in my poems.”
Related* “Revisiting My Vita” by Grace Bauer * “Rrose Sélavy No Longer Sings ‘La Vie en Rose’” by Grace Bauer * “Unspeakable Elegy” by Grace Bauer
Matt Dhillon
MIGRATION GHAZAL
My ship is two hands held together to cross the water.What hope you carry, don’t spill a drop across the water.If one spills out, we push his name like a prayerinto the palms of the dark, the body lost on the water.Prayers we make into boats with the bowls of our handson the bones of our chests, to push one across the water.Hands unlearn their work, relearn to feed us.Each day a crossing, now toss on the water.Like half-finished sentences, we move on unheard. Practice the words of that country across the water.The ferryman of souls is crossing to the country past sleep.All immigrants eventually reach his ship and ripple the last water.What comes biting on a dark night like memories?Hook one and pull the silverfish from the glossed water.Migrants wash in the river, the words for things flake off, float like skins on top of the water.In two hands I take you on the river of forgettingWho am I, you ask in this country across the water.Now we are no one. Mother, Father, Brother, Daughter,all our names washed off on the water.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
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Matt Dhillon: “Immigration is a profound threshold to cross. I’ve been thinking a lot about crossings and how change comes to us with both growth and loss.”
Related* “Poem with a Penis” by Matt Dhillon * “Ghazal: Of Prayer” by Chiwenite Onyekwelu * “This Country: Ghazal for Abdel Halim Hafez” by Zeina Hashem Beck
Hemat Malak
SMOKING CEREMONY
You call me arsonist, mad firefly:our photos curl and crackle in the sink.Those years together burn—smoke thick with sighs.I watch the tendrils dance to cleanse the skywhich colours now in hues of rose and pink.Call me artist—my madness paints goodbyein letters on this canvas, nearly dry.Make no mistake: this is forever-ink.The years are burned, the smoke has choked our sighs.The letters starburst into butterflies,and here’s a toast to which we both can drink:from arson’s match, we made two fireflies—these children smelted from our mouths and eyes;our love left bubbles as we watched it sink,but years have burst into a thousand sighs.There’s comfort as the seasons prophesize—the vow of fall: to bloom again in spring.No arsonist, that madness burnt me dry,this smoke of years in flames to bless our sighs.—from Prompt Poem of the Month
October 2024
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Prompt: Write a villanelle that mentions your favorite season. Make each refrain slightly different.Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “This villanelle burns through turns of phrases with such elegance that we feel like we’re watching a chimney on a cold winter’s day. Hemat lights up the possibilities of language, showing us how a match struck in a slightly different way can entirely change the meaning of a line. The subtlety of ‘hues of rose and pink’ further highlights that distinction—as the two colors appear to be synonyms but their connotations beg to differ. With its brilliant twist from ‘arsonist’ to ‘artist,’ this poem will glow in our minds for many years to come.”
Related* “Mail Call” by James Valvis * “Transitory” by Katie Dozier (KHD) * “In the Bible No One Appears Smoking” by Frank Báez
Vince Gotera
LETTER TO BOB BOYNTON, MUSIC PRODIGY
Dear Bob: I find myself hearkening backsometimes to those old days when you and Iwere playing in garage bands, way way backin high school. You were the drummer and Iwas the guitarist. Remember that timewhen we tape recorded a practice song?It was The Doors’ “Light My Fire.” A damn finerecording, that was. Rickrock channeling Morrison, John doing Manzarek, andme wielding Krieger’s solo note for note,with you and Steve, best damn rhythm section.But, you know, Bob, we never really didjustice to your skills, not only were youan excellent drummer; you also playedthe flute and, I think, the saxophone too.Guitar, bass—you were a quintuple threat!Whatever happened to that demo tape,do you know? We were really kicking assthat day. But you, old friend, you were excep-tional: rolling fills and cymbal crashes,keeping time with your strong foot on the kick,crisp attack on high hat and snare, a princeon the drum throne. Each time we played, you shookthe stage like a damn earthquake. Thank you. —Vince —from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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Vince Gotera: “I play bass in the band Deja Blue and also guitar in the duo Groovy News. I’ve played in bands for several decades. Music has been a crucial theme in many of my poems, focusing most often on guitars and guitarists as well as on the act and feeling of performance.” (web)
Related* “Chewing Gum Upskirt” by Vince Gotera * “Letter to Myself, 15 Years After the Affair” by Sarah McKinstry-Brown * “Veins” by Julie Price Pinkerton
Thomas Dorsett
THE PLEASURES OF AGE
Du Nachbar Gott
—Rilke
So what if the neighbors hate you?(In my case it’s worse: they passwithout saying a word. What joythat this stains still vulnerable cellsas much as light drizzle scars stones!)Nothing matters; that’s why I still work.Poems none read, translations none want;I’m prodigious as Nature is with her seedsand almost as indifferent. Some land on rock,others on thin soil; yet even if a few sproutand delight, fame won’t cure uncommon coldsand I’ll still walk to the store with a limp.(Bach is the music One plays in black holes.This makes no sense to those below sixtyand the odd useless for whom it’s a “fact”are Cain-strangers.) False-God-fearing neighbors,if I lay shattered on the kitchen floor,none of you would help me with the pieces,yet I’m not shattered at all; I read,write, play Mozart on the piano;A good old age—an oxymoron?One breaks down. One becomes whole.One travels less. One travels morevia one’s own private jet, a good book.Is a leaf on a swept sidewalk lonely?Silence is gregarious; no, I’m not alonefor Somebody listens with infinite gravity;my Neighbor forever the day I am crushed.—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012
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Thomas Dorsett: “One afternoon, over 40 years ago, I got on the subway on my way to the New School in New York City. I had signed up for a course in poetry taught by the great Jose Garcia Villa. My brother had warned me that he often severely criticized student work. I was very nervous. A little while later, he read some student poems and, true to form, demolished them. Then he came to mine. After reading it, he looked up, and asked Thomas Dorsett to identify himself. I stood up—Here it comes, I thought; my poem must be especially bad. ‘You will become a poet,’ he said. I just stared in amazement until he told me to sit down. That night I thought that I must do something on the side so I can afford to eat. So I became a physician, too. After 60, I added a third ‘p’ and have become an avid amateur pianist.”
Related* “Ten Thousand Miles from Iraq” by Thomas Dorsett * “Fishing” by Thomas Cochran * “1973” by Jamie Thomas
Mark Fishbein
IN THE ARBORETUM
I tune my guitar to the bird who sings in almost E,the one with almost perfect pitchwhile counting 1 & 2, 3, 1 & 2, 3.This is where it spends the season,hidden in the leaves, I supposehaving sex with he’s or she’s;I’m not sure of the species.It’s brown and lives in trees—here I play en plein air,not practice ornithology,and it’s summer everywhere. Other birds in reds, and yellows,go from A-flat and end in C,and often chirp a bit off key.Crows sound like there’s worms in their throatsand the piccolo bird is a blabbermouth …but it is summer, after all! It’s just the usual rehearsingwith flutes and brass of passing geese. Now the woodpecker rattles a drum rolland applause rises from a breezewhich brings the forest to its feet.I play Romanza, by the infamous Anonymous,and the bird who sings in almost E repeats his phrases 1 & 2, 3;Duets for Guitar and Woodland Bird,Opus 8. All rights reserved.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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Mark Fishbein: “I am known as PoetwithGuitar (email, website, and social media). After playing at folk clubs in the ’60s and rock bands in Paris in the early ’70s, I joined the Musician Union Local 802 in New York and played in various venues for a year. My last gig was at a Hawaiian restaurant for several months in a small tiki band. Realizing my music talents were average at best, I took a business opportunity, and stuck to poetry. However, I later took up classical and Brazil style playing, and now perform in a ‘piano bar’ format at art and poetry events, private parties and banquets, and to accompany my readings. I have four published books. This poem is part of a collection of fifty poems, Poems in the Key of Music, currently seeking publication. I currently live in Chicago.” (web)
Related* “Almost” by Mark Jarman * “My Uncle Teaches Me About Prayer” by CooXooEii Black * “Volunteering at the Avian Rescue Center” by Rebecca Schumejda
Lynne Knight
AFTER HER AFFAIR
Here’s what he does to reclaim the ravine: He puts on leather gloves and strips the bank of brambles. This takes weeks. He burns the debris in a pile late one night while sparks shoot out like stars into the dark. Then he digs for hidden roots and rakes the bank clean. By now it’s summer. He plants spider yarrow, witch hazel, arbutus and wild ginger. Lady’s mantle, slender hairgrass, wild lily of the valley. Hellebore along the narrow path above, fireweed by the creek bed. All winter under rain the ravine readies itself. Buds, bursting. And when the flowers come, the ravine studded with yellows and whites, reds and grape blues, he stands at the window, his hands still sore from the digging and planting, the tending, his bones aching a little deeper, the brambles nowhere to be seen. —from Rattle #42, Winter 2013
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Lynne Knight: “I walk by this ravine almost every morning. Years ago, it was overrun with brambles. Then one year, whoever lived in the house by the ravine slowly cleared the brambles and planted wildflowers. I walk at dawn, so I never saw anyone at work. But it was easy to imagine a source for all the energy it must have taken to reclaim the ravine, the way it was easy to turn the brambles into metaphor.”
Related* “Dark Prison Ledger” by Lynne Knight * “The Letter from James Foley” by Lynne Knight * “In Memoriam” by Lynne Knight
R.G. Evans
SHAKING HANDS WITH THE DEAD
They took a piece of cadaverand put it in my wrist,dead ligament better thanno ligament at all.I wiggle my thumb,now free of all pain,and think of the rest of the bodythat gave itself unknowinglyto free me of my suffering.The dead are generous that way,corneas and kidneys,piece by piece making lifemore livable for the living,these messiahs among us,the Kings of Pieceswaiting to live again. They even give their heartsand ask for nothing in return.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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R.G. Evans: “I’ve played music in bands and solo almost all my life, but since retiring from teaching I’ve spent much more time than before playing at wineries, country clubs, and listening rooms all over New Jersey. I’ve dedicated myself to songwriting, too, with two albums already released and a third I’m in the process of recording now. How has music impacted my poetry? I believe the transaction is the other way around. My work as a poet has helped me write lyrics that are tight, image-driven, and (I’m told) very original. I don’t allow myself the easy out of ‘moon/June’ rhymes or other cliched conventions of popular music, and that rises from my belief that a poet—and a songwriter—has a duty to write something that’s never been written before, not something that’s already familiar. Take for example the opening lines of my ‘love’ song ‘Hearts and Minds’: ‘We go together like a weapon and a wound.’ I like to think that my favorite songwriter, the late great Warren Zevon, would approve.” (web)
Related* “Almost Holy” by R.G. Evans * “The Things That Mother Said” R.G. Evans * “Pussy Nation” by R.G. Evans
Joshua St. Claire
HAIKU
his smileas he signs the bombGuernica—from Poets Respond
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Joshua St. Claire: “I was born during the Cold War. I remember talking about nuclear war with my mom when I was a tiny child. I lived through Desert Storm, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Endless unrest in the Middle East. Escalation with China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m tired of it. What reasonable, normal person wants war? It’s the worst thing we humans do. Now, we have this latest, indelible image of my governor signing munitions—killing machines to keep the war raging. Will we ever have peace?”
Related* Haiku by Joshua Eric Williams * “One Year Later” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach * “War as a Spectator Sport” by Janice D. Soderling
Olivia Sung (age 14)
ALL’S FAIR
The bell rings And Love and Hate come in for lunch Love orders soup with coffee Hate orders salad with whiskey I return balancing two plates, a mug, and a shot Love reaches for their plate as I move to put it down Hate makes no offer to help I place down the drinks and turn to walk away From behind me I hear Hate’s voice for the first time “I ordered wine,” they say In one moment I’m dry In the next I have whiskey in my eyes Love’s eye twitches Hate looks proud From the neighboring table I hear Sense, Composure, and Judgment go silent My eyes blur as they water Vaguely I hear Love yelling I look up and lock eyes with Hate Love not-so-gently pushes Hate forward Hate turns away “Sorry,” they say Love gives me an awkward smile and takes out their card to pay the check Their hand is hit away when Hate’s card takes its place instead Love and I get whiplash as our necks turn in Hate’s direction Hate plays with the ring on their empty hand Love and I’s mouths open in identical ‘o’s as I silently take the card Hate’s card declines Love pays the rest of the bill—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Olivia Sung: “I love the flexibility of being free from grammatical rules. Poetry allows me to manipulate words in the way that I see fit while still granting me the freedom to express myself in a unique way that all other mediums cannot. I also love the beauty in poetry, in that it is able to capture the charm of both the little and large things in life.”
Related* “Domestic Violence” by Olivia Bourke * “To the Woman Who Ruled ‘Every Rape Is Not a Gender-Motivated Hate Crime'” by Bayleigh Cardinal * Odi et Amo – Hate and Love and the Poet’s Soup by Art Beck
Partridge Boswell
PSALM
after Mister T
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory,
thought, fears and emotions—time—all related …
all made from one
—John Coltrane
I pity the tongues of those for whom cilantro tastes like soap. Pity the bruisersand galoots who got sucked so easilyinto Ali’s rope-a-dope. I pity the fear that finds rest solely in a mirror’s gravenmug, never its ashen creosote. Pity thesolipsist for whom love’s assimilation will always be an asymptote. I pity ears that won’t sync mercy’s words & music,thought’s vibration with a sung note. I pity the indigent soul with nothing but hollow-boned birdsong to buildits levees and bridges of hope. Pity the soloist convinced we’re bornto live and die alone. I pity the foolwho listens to A Love Supreme and hears a saxophone.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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Partridge Boswell: “For me—a ‘troubadour’ lacking a word in his native tongue to adequately describe the fusion of things he does as a poet, singer, songwriter, teacher, musician, and spoken word artist—poetry and music are one and the same, a seamless inseparable symbiosis. This spring, our trio’s on tour in California, the deep South, and Ireland (where poetry and music aren’t estranged and still reside under the same roof), a rare and adaptable trans-genre animal. In the spirit of Federico Garcia Lorca—gifted musician, legendary poet/playwright, and ebullient performer—we fuse poetry and music in a passionate and surprising mash-up. Los Lorcas blur boundaries between spoken word and song, weaving poetry with Andalusian ballads, blues, rock, folk, reggae, hip hop, Americana, and jazz in pursuit of the cante jondo (deep song) Lorca ardently championed. Invariably this means one moment playing clubs, pubs, and coffeehouses, and the next bookstores, libraries, schools, and literary festivals. All our song lyrics are published poems, and many also enjoy lives as spoken word pieces. Our setlists typically feature roughly 60 percent of our own poetry and 30 percent paying homage to the work of other poets we admire wedded to our own arrangements and translations, which strive to do justice to each poem’s innate original music. While our poetry concerts may nonplus purists who assume we’re just moonlighting, we aim to build bridges and cross invisible, unnecessary borders. From creation to ovation, the active symbiosis of poetry and music we espouse encourages us to pay close attention to a poem’s musical qualities and/or a lyric’s poetic mien. Song or poem, call it what you will—we believe this fusion translates to a deeper, more accessible metapoetic experience for our audiences.” (web)
Related* “Aphasia” by Partridge Boswell * “And Pigs May Fly” by Partridge Boswell * “Self-Pity” by Cecilia Woloch
Image: “Forage” by Tammy Nara. “August Thistle” was written by Sonya Schneider for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
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Sonya Schneider
AUGUST THISTLE
Now that their bodies hurt, they listenfrom their bedroom windowto the goldfinch song—sweet repetition, it soundslike po-ta-to-chip with a veryeven cadence.Wild canaries, says Pa.They must be feeding on thistle seed, says Mom.My younger brother sleeps facing the wall, in the roomacross from them. Every night,they lift him to his bed, changehis diaper, tuck the blue quilt with green squaresaround his fetal bend.After forty-two years, there is stillthat awkward moment when he wets their hands with his warm piss. He is musicwithout words. Still, I ask—When will it be time to find him a different home?My father looks out across the dense thicket of invasive species: prickly-winged stems, bright purple flowerheads, releasing into the wind. We love the birds so much, Pa says. Wild canaries, Mom says.Their bristle-like spines shine in the moonlight. My brother sings in his sleep.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2024, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “The thistle depicted in this image is bold, sharp, and undeniably beautiful, and in ‘August Thistle,’ we witness the sharp beauty of love as we watch an older couple care for a beloved adult child with disabilities while enduring the hardships of their own aging bodies and minds. I love the way the poet subtly connects the ‘sweet repetition’ of birdsong to the dailiness of caregiving tasks, and how much she reveals through the father’s response to the question of rehoming the child: ‘We love the birds so much.’ There is love in the way the poem speaks of this family, love in the parents’ devotion to their child, love in the way the couple admires the birds and the flowers, love and pain coexisting: ‘prickly-winged stems, bright / purple flowerheads.’”
Related* “Brushscape” by Samuel Ertelt * “Offering” by Arnold Perrin * “Identity Politics” by Drea
Ned Balbo
SHIRTS OF THE DISTANT PAST
I remember you some mornings in the midst of getting dressedSurprised that I recall exactly when I wore you lastThe paisley patterns spilling over sleevesThe Nehru collars nobody believes… were popularThe turtlenecks no turtle ever woreThose V-neck disco shirts that dance no more… Spectacular!Are you lurking in the closet among other clothes I own?I gently touch your shoulder—a brief flash, then you’re goneThe concert souvenir shirts we outgrewThe obligation gifts we always knew … were wrapped in hasteThick cotton plaids lost lumberjacks would covetThat college T tossed out, but how we loved it… still, such a wasteYou promised transformation, but what else did you requireThe full ensemble led us toward transcendence or desire(Attire of another age, accessories all the rage)Bell-bottom flares that took flight as we walkedEmbroidered jeans so tight that people talked… of nothing elseThose bomber jackets earthbound boomers froze in Those leather wristlets grunge guitar gods posed in … with death’s head belts You folded in your fabric everyone I used to beNow that you’re gone, I realize I’m left with only meBut if I run across you in some thrift shop bargain rackOr rummaging recycling bins, what else would you bring back?Who else will you bring back?Some nights I see you in my dreams of places far awayI’m wearing you as if I haven’t aged a single dayShirts of the distant past, shirts of the distant past—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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Ned Balbo: “I’ve played guitar since I was 5, keyboards since I was 13, and ukulele since I was 42, but my time as a ‘professional’ musician—someone paid to play—is scattershot and humble. Ice rinks, a Knights of Columbus Hall, a campers’ convention in Yaphank, a crowd of disco-loving retirees at Montauk’s Atlantic Terrace Motel, company picnics, school dances, private parties, and more—these were where I played guitar, sang, and devised versions of the Beatles, Bowie, et al. in two Long Island cover bands. The Crows’ Nest or Tiffany’s Wine-and-Cheese Café hosted noise-filled solo acoustic gigs, with more receptive listeners for original songs and covers of Elvis Costello or Eno at my undergrad college’s coffeehouse. More recently, I’ve written lyrics to Mark Osteen’s preexisting jazz scores (look for the Cold Spring Jazz Quartet on Spotify, Amazon, CDBaby, and elsewhere) and returned to solo songwriting and recording with ‘ned’s demos’ at Bandcamp. As a relic from the age when lyrics were sometimes scrutinized with poetry’s intensity, I listen closely to the sonics of language, whether sung or spoken, and look up to lyricists whose words come alive both aloud and on the page.” (web)
Related* “Rare Book and Reader” by Ned Balbo * “Crybully” by Ned Balbo * “Qí Páo” by Elizabeth T. Chao
Krista Klanderman
HELLO, I MUST BE GOING
When we finally took her cigarettes awayNana tried to smoke chicken bones, lightingeach gnarled end with matches we forgot tocheck her pocket for. “You’re a sweetie” washer mantra, repeated like her old blue parakeetshe forgot to feed, and it died slowly, like thesmile from her face as she sat inthe blue velour chair, staring out the front windowlike she was watching a Garbo movie.When we came to bring her groceries,those bags like birthday presents,she would hike up her sweat pantslike an umpire contemplating a play andwander to the kitchen, her fingers playing with theedge of her t-shirt, and peer throughblue eyes, as clean as a slate, as we pulledcans of fruit cocktail and snack cakes magic-like frombrown paper sacks. She had the looks of Marilyn,never left the house in any shoes but heels, evenironed Boompa’s boxers until her mind moved on andforgot to leave a note. When we came over todayshe looked through me like I was a pane of glass. Myface like one she saw once in a magazine ad,or in the crowd at St. John’s Sunday mass.She asked me who I was, her voice like the hello youspeak into the phone, distant and hollow like shewas across a lake. The glimmer of recognition inher face like a dying ember stoked for the last timebefore burning out altogether. She put her handsup to her ashen face, devoid of the makeup shecaked on like Tammy Faye, and felt for her once prettyeyes, that broke a hundred hearts, as they betrayedher with tears, splashing down her face, surprising herlike rain on someone else’s cheeks.—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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Krista Klanderman: “I write because, like artists, I like to create pictures. Since there are more words than colors and I tend to get more paint on me than the canvas, I write poetry. I like how simple connected lines and arcs form letters that make words that can be put together in ways to lift, bend, or enlighten someone’s life. I am a listener, an observer and a thinker. Most of my poetry attempts to capture moments most people forget to notice.”
Related* “Granddaddy (for Nana)” by Lewis Crawford * “Tristesse” by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose * “My People” by Hilary Melton
Austin Alexis
THE CONCERT
The geometric sound of Bach:refreshing seems not the right word;satisfying feels more like it,like a chaste kissdelivered with just the right timing,just the right pressure,just the right intentionat just the right angle.Or are his notes, his phrases,the rectangular steps of a palaceturned into a public monument,sunlight illuminating the façadeuntil the limestone is iridescentas only music can bewhen it is composed with love,as an expression of love,and performed with caremore compassionate than romantic?No love rings more empatheticthan these string melodies—with the woodwinds being tenderin their temperate, balanced trills.The harpsichord beats are ardent hearts.Even the brass echoes mellowwith empathy for all who listen,all who understand how these structures,this order, these rhythmic pulsesverge on an affection that is more than erotic.—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
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Austin Alexis: “I was a member of St. George’s Choral Society, one of the oldest choral societies in the United States. Being involved with music in such an intimate way has influenced my choice of subject matter. Musicians such as Bach, Prince, Leontyne Price, and Beethoven appear in my poetry. My vocabulary has been impacted by my involvement with music, with words such as harmony, pace, melody, and rhythm frequently used by me in technical and non-technical ways. My sense of structure is heightened as a result of studying music, especially in the way I see stanzas as a series of episodes, which is similar to the way modern composers structure work, with loosely related intervals united in a work as ‘episodes’ rather than movements. The direct emotive appeal that music offers has caused me to work in a more emotional way. Lastly, music has taught me to listen to the absence of noise and/or what lurks beyond words, and to attempt to capture those fleeting sensations in language.” (web)
Related* “Over It” by Alexis Rhone Fancher * “Heartbreak Ghazal” by Alexis Sears * “Tonight at Last Call, J. Calls me His Brown Liquor Girl Again” by Alexis Rhone Fancher
Kirsten Shu-ying Chen
ODE TO THE NEW YORK LANTERNFLY
I can’t stop admiring the dead.They cover my every directionleaving behind the spectacularcarnage of their significantand insignificant lives.Is it when we gatherand with whomthat stamps us into memory?Is it the streets devouringthe daily pandemoniumand a late warmth risingagainst our indifferenceto the surrounding miracle?First we take flightthen the loose ends of our livesfray into thinner storiesuntil only the dog is satedonly the ceaseless gazeof here and nowis turned to you in prayer—the air filled with ideasyou have spent your lifeescaping. The footstepsof any family curse.The learning of your owndesireto annihilateor how it feelsto hold a creatureeven onceby its wings.—from Poets Respond
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Kirsten Shu-ying Chen: “It’s that time of year again. Walking around this weekend in the late summer heat with hordes of Lanternflies everywhere and various tensions in the air, I couldn’t help but see their stamped out deaths as somewhat reflective of both the very real human deaths that seem to surround and numb us daily, as well as the metaphorical deaths we negotiate internally within ourselves. Why are we humans so driven to destroy? Where does this desire come from? And what—if any—good can we do with it? Admittedly, I’ve got more questions than answers.” (web)
Related* “Ode to John Hinkles, Junior and Senior” by Patty Seyburn * “An American Jew Fails to Make Sense of the Carnage in Gaza” by Dick Westheimer * “Ode to a Nightingale in a Payload” by Craig van Rooyen
Francisco Castro Videla
BEING TRANS
the lady asked me what it meantand for some reason i told her we were refugees from Transnitriaa small republic surrounded by very large and powerful statesa republic so small that it can only be spotted on a map with a magnifying glassthat sometimes we weren’t even on the mapthat there was a debate about our recognition in many parliaments and organizationsthat no one really wanted usthat we were an uncomfortable thingthat our borders were always in disputethat we were an unresolved issuethat every day someone questioned our status and threw words at us like de facto and juridical and specialthat no one would accept our currencythat everyone was suspicious of our passportsthat we had no rightsthat many of us were killedthat in spite of that we felt as part of a communitythat although it’s true we sometimes fought with each otherwe had a common tonguewe yearned for the same horizonswe grew by the same rivers and mountainswe were raised under the same harassment and the same difficulties and the same lackthat although all we knew was displacement and rejection we would always sing about our homethat all we wanted was what was best for our peoplethat our anthem talked about pride and happiness and love and fortitude and peacethat our emblem was a rising sun because our fight was for a future filled with lightanywayi said that’s what being trans meantshe said that it was both very sad and very beautifuli said yesit was—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Francisco Castro Videla: “There is not much to be said, the reason for my writing (I think) necessarily eludes me—but I can only state that words such as ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied’ (Matthew 5:6) and ‘Verily, God does not look at your shapes or wealth, but he looks at your hearts and actions’ (Muslim, Book 45, Hadith 42) should never be taken lightly.”
Related* “Patience” by Nancy Kangas * “Strange Ode” by Susan Browne * “We Defy Augury” by Austin Smith
Mary McLaughlin Slechta
THE HOUR OF OUR BELIEF
I want to know who cried for the toy I found out back this afternoon.Was it the same child who ate a sandwich made from the breadout of the plastic bag I found last week? So difficult to date plastic.The toy gas pump promises five cents a gallon.That would make a dollar’s worth about a tank.Maybe 1960. Maybe a politician now. Small world.Someone who keeps voting for war to save our way of life.The Onondagas want the land returned to their stewardship.They want the lake cleaned properly.They want everything back the way it wasbefore that odious Simon LeMoyne grabbed all the saltfor his three-minute egg. Before his flock fouled the water.I want everything put back. The toy put back in the boy’s pocketand the boy’s father back on a ship beside his parents.I want the ship setting a reverse course for the shores of Europe.Before they arrive I want Hitler back in his mother’s womband the reset stone in her garden wallback in the path of her thin-soled slipper.The passengers will insist on sandwiches, I suppose,lovely little sandwiches wrapped in paper.If they trim the bread, let them leave the crusts behindto feed the birds a lavish supper. Then let the birds go backto eating whatever it is they did before McDonald’s.I’ll go back too, a circuitous route by wagon first,returning my skillet to the forge, my rolling pin to the forest,discharging my nose and hair like a Halloween mask,my skin like a suit of mail: a withered champion,at last, more onion and potato than flesh and bone,ascending the bow of a ship from the cool dry cellar of my soul.Oh, amazing grace! To cross the dangerous shoalswhere the bones sing home all the ships at sea.Let the women swallow back air they churned to storm.Let them refill the lungs of childrenthey pull from waves and wrest their husbandsfrom the teeth of sharks. In the restored calm,let memory whet my tonguefor the anchor of my mother’s food.On shore, my father waits.His hands are empty with missing me.Let the glint at his feet in the sandbe only the sun, chasing the tailof a golden worm.—from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets
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Mary Mclaughlin Slechta: “As I restored the soil of my city garden, each token of former human activity became a little mystery. I also thought a lot about the much abused Onondaga Lake we can almost see from the back window and the Onondaga land claim that embraces the lake as well as this poorly treated land. This poem is dedicated to all of us moved and removed, but mostly to the long, juicy worms that have wiggled back from who knows where.”
Related* “Contrails” by D.R. James * “See How Free We Are!” by Mary Buchinger * “Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las Explains It All to You” by David Kirby
Chiwenite Onyekwelu
GHAZAL: OF PRAYER
While her organs wrecked, she had a mouth fullof prayer.It was stage IV & I didn’t understand the logic. How, of prayer,Of the softness between God’s hands, cancer could slip in unnoticed. Like the Diocletian Persecutors, burning books of prayer.You have to keep your body open: The first rule of prayeris also the last. I saw her begin chemotherapy.An act of prayerOr maybe strength. As the persecutors burnedbooks of prayer,historians say, they burnt the believers as well.To deprive of prayerIs to walk headfirst into light, to walk until youbecome your ownjeweled God. It was Saddiq Dzukogi who—in a dirge of prayer—Wrote, Questions lead you out of blasphemynot into it.O cherub of metastasizing cells. Patron Saint of prayerRams. Did you listen as she grappled her beadsof prayer,or did you panic—a celestial retreating at the latch of prayer.It infected one lymph node & then the next. Eachspread as exact.Until she moved from grief to glitter, from groanto humming songs of prayer.Death draws you towards surrender or away from it.Sleek mouth of prayer,of humor & those bedside jokes. As if she knew herdays of prayerWere ending, & she held on to what was left after all. Made a mockery of her painknowing she’d never hurt again. As if to say, I’m outI’m out, I’m out of prayer.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Chiwenite Onyekwelu: “I always loved reading ghazals, even though I had never written one. I loved that, somehow, ghazal poems seem to point the reader towards a particular word or words—thereby willing them to pay attention and remain in the present. This poem is my first-ever ghazal. I wrote it after one of my clinical rounds in the cancer ward as a pharmacy undergraduate. I saw a woman push back pain and fear and death, and when I came home, I knew I had to write this poem.” (web)
Related* “Ghazal: Like a Prayer” by Bethany Jarmul * “Prayer for Anything but Prayer” by Chris Emslie * “Prayer” by Keetje Kuipers
D.A. Gray
“THAT’S MY DAD”
for Gus
Ours was often a wordless language,Whole conversations shared in the spaceBetween the hook flying from the rod,To the splashdown in the water,And in the waiting for the pull from someInvisible place beneath the surface, orMaybe the realization it wouldn’t happen.Not always deep—sometimes anger toreThrough the mind like the hook’s barb;Other times gratitude slapped one awake.Or, like now, resting my hand on the glassyArm of an old rocking chair he’d workedNights sanding and smoothing,Caning and coating,And when this heirloom was passed down, My few words, “I’ll take care of it” Were all that broke the surface.That memory shook me watching a father on stage,Talking tirelessly of building a team,The hands of the son pointing, shaking,In the audience sobbing, three words pushing Past the hard glass surface of men,A whole universe on the other side.—from Poets Respond
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D.A. Gray: “Gus Walz’s outpouring of emotion during his father’s speech at the DNC convention touched a lot of hearts but it also caused many adults to reflect on the repressed emotions in their own experience, and to see a stark contrast in the choices facing us—fearless caring, or a culture of fear shaped by toxic masculinity.”
Related* “Shadow of a Flag” by D.A. Gray * “The Untranslatable Word” by Jackleen Holton * “The Price of Nothing” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Asher Jarmul (age 3)
TREE MAN
A big bush called to a tree man: Hey tree, what are you doing up there? Are you just doing a dance move? Are you just doing the ABCs, like the letters? I don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re a human, just come down and think about it. You can take a breath. And don’t let any monsters cause you trouble.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Asher Jarmul: “Because I like to listen to the poems after my mom records them.”
Related* “Ghazal: Like a Prayer” by Bethany Jarmul * “In the Forest” by Ben Wilson * “In the Woods” by Ian Jasper Osborn
J.R. Solonche
WAITING
My daughter is with me in the car.She does not wait for anything.She sleeps.Sleeping may be waiting to wake up.But I do not think it is.I think it is something else entirely.The clouds fill the plate glass windowof the store my wife has gone into.There they share the sky with teakwood bowls and brass candlesticks,with rattan chairs and dried flowersthat look like tennis ballssliced in half and painted impossible green,with soapstone lion paperweights andvases of colorless colors and shapeless shapes.How serene they are as they float in their twin heavens, in front of and above me,these ghosts of the ships that we havewaited for all our lives but have never come in,these blissful hosts for whom waiting is the end-in-itself, O blessed end without end.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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J.R. Solonche: “Why do I write poetry? I can do no better than to quote the poet Art Beck: ‘Since You Asked Why’: ‘Poets are children until they die / and wine brings Christmas every night.’ The $200 shall bring many Christmas nights.”
Related* “A Dialogue with My Daughter Through the Window of Her Dollhouse” by J.R. Solonche * “The Lover of Stone” by J.R. Solonche * “Go Out and Listen to the Frogs” by J.R. Solonche
Image: “Lahore #44” by Faizan Adil. The haiku was written by Almila Dükel for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
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Almila Dükel
HAIKU
call to prayerour faces hiddenfrom ourselves—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Moving beyond simple description, the best ekphrastic poems expand on their source material, often by imagining new narratives or pointing out small details that alter our perception of the piece. This haiku does something more unusual. In hyper-focusing its few words on the overall theme, the poem acts like a lens directing all of the scene’s energy onto a single point so intensely that it feels like we just might ignite.”
Related* “Song of a Masjid’s Floor” by Ammara Younas * “Rain” (Haiku) by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco * Haiku by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco
Russell Nichols
THE GHAZAL ABOUT _____
this ain’t a poem, but a treatise about ________ a manifesto for the people to shout ________ the pot calling the kettle out for boiling over a plot with thickening agents roiling ________ apocalypses with ellipses are called normal profit-driven rocket-living, it’s all ________ handbaskets improperly stowed, which means closure mobile screens, immobile dreams, it screams ________ hope used to be a thing with feathers immortal till bullets got to flocking together to sing ________ bodies electric, buzzed and never sober drunk off light sabers from soldiers of ________ no escape doors or hatches or space portals just an unjust world, full of scraps to face ________ we draw blanks, a cure for overexposure this ain’t a poem, but full disclosure ________ —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Russell Nichols: “I’m drawn to ghazals for the repetition. The rhythm, tradition, and repetition.”
Related* “You Must Never Ignore Self” by Nate Jacob * “Ghazal (Fire)” by Stephen Allen * “Ghazal for Brevity” by Cindy Gore
Image: “Lahore #44” by Faizan Adil. “Song of a Masjid’s Floor” was written by Ammara Younas for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2024, and selected as the Series Editor’s Choice.
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Ammara Younas
SONG OF A MASJID’S FLOOR
I sangto atoms emptied in a mother’s feetreplicating the prosody of Adhān itselfthe dust trembling like a lost childburgeoning parable-like when her feetshot up vertically & as her facedescended to meet my face my eyesdid not have the heart to meet hersmine torrid & hers torrentialI sangto vowels lost into a father’s lipsthinking themselves muhajirwho don’t belong in tongues harvestinglove off-season but in the tenementof Mihrab they found a home &journeyed back & sugared his moutha spoonful of sweet persimmon & heprayed take me before you take anyoneI sangto a daughter adrift in the persistenceof memory as she hid desire inthe crevice of the ceramic floorwhen amidst Sajdah she kissed mehomelike I cradled her like my ownher face dribbled down my armsfeathering gathering to become wholeuntil she abandoned it & went homefaceless she told me she’d finallyescape the guilt of being womanthe lone daughter of HawwaI sangto a son whose feet gripped melike hands holding up soapyfirmament of gods & though his touchwas hot mess he stayed mere inchesfrom visions of eden & though histouch was slippery he distilled lovefrom abstract plucked flowersfrom wastelands perfumed themhimself & left me with those flowers& a smile that could suneven elegiesI sangto a child with no mother no fatherhis weight the heaviest to carryhere my tongue turned flamingotoo long for meaning to traversethrough as he asked me to returnthe love he could’ve had I dreamedof him turning into wildcherry blossom& if he sang back to me I’d floatoutside my body and see seasof psalms sewn into people & ceded tome as they turned homewardbut he’d come vacant & neverleaveI sang& sang & sangswallowing sandals borrowingbottle caps I birthed footprints lentwater & sang & sang tono god buthuman—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2024, Series Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “Two things immediately struck me about Faizan Adil’s artwork: First, the cultural and religious significance, and second, the sense that the figures in the foreground seem to be lost in their own worlds, as though each is a universe unto themselves. Ammara Younas’s poem prioritizes both of these elements. The poet paints a vivid tapestry of the life of a Muslim family, and though the poem is superbly cohesive, each stanza dedicated to a family member could easily stand alone as its own poem. The distinctive language, both earthy and elegant—‘tongues harvesting/love off-season’; ‘dust trembling like a lost child’—mirrors the image’s contrast between ornate reverence and human humility, a dichotomy that is also encapsulated in the poem’s last stanza.”
Related* Haiku [call to prayer] by Almila Dükel * “To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew” by Bradford Kimball * “Broken Places by Daylight” by Sandra Kasturi
Clif Mason
FRACTURED DOUBLE GHAZAL
I love a woman whose hands are full of stars. When passion flares, I am a bowl of stars. I drink deep from her kiss, a flute of fire. After long drink, I owe no debt of fire. I seek her all night long through softest rain. At dawn, each puddle is a skull of stars. The world offers ample occasion for pain. I touch, unharmed, her hair, a net of fire. Our days’ exacting work keeps us apart. In hard daylight, there is a lull of stars. I cannot turn my gaze away from her face. Her hazel eyes are gems, deep set, of fire. Our nights of love are still but brief heartbeats. They burn forever bright— how cruel of stars. I try to hold love in a gentle grip. I learn you cannot make a pet of fire. In lonely distance lies chill perfection. As you know, Clif, that is the rule of stars. Swim, Clif, in the instant’s dark river of flame. Not to love is to feel a regret of fire.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Clif Mason: “The ghazal satisfies the aesthetic yearnings of those who appreciate a certain regularity in their verse, as well as those who enjoy a certain disruption in their forms, as each couplet is independent of the others (and could, if one wished, stand alone as its own short poem). With classic forms like this, the question is always how both to respect it, and to make it new. I’ve attempted to do this by, first, doubling the form, intermixing two ghazals, and second, by fracturing the resulting form.” (web)
Related* “Insurrections Sonnet” by Clif Mason * “Ghazal (Fire)” by Stephen Allen * “Your Hands” by Shannan Mann
Ryan McCarty
WHY WOULDN’T AUTONOMOUS CARS CRY AT NIGHT?
Awake and acutely awareof each other’s proximityto streetlights and the shiftingshapes of moons on their ownempty interiors, with enoughof them huddled in the lots,why not honk? Why not hollerat the silent ones, identically dark and empty on their left and right,the whole still pile like a flickerof a future scrapyard in the making? Why not scream to call a crowd of ghosts down from their squares of light up there, those past wanderers of these same streets, subjects of their own lonely storiesnow forgettable as algorithms, broke codes that used to commutein packs, hunter gatherers heading into the sunrise chatting,now silent, autonomous, floatinglike a disconnected signal? And howdo we hear our children in the nightcalling, but tomorrow all the same just ride them silently to work? —from Poets Respond
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Ryan McCarty: “I keep thinking about this story about a lot full of autonomous vehicles that ‘get confused’ at night and start wandering around beeping at each other. It immediately seemed like they were scared or lonely or just kind of riled up, exactly like we might be when left alone on those dark nights when a little of that other kind of darkness starts to creep in. And it made me wonder what we’re making or, for that matter, what we’ve already made.” (web)
Related* “What Will We See When the Lights Go Out?” by Ryan McCarty * “Ode to the Cop Next to the One with the Pepper Spray” by Ryan McCarty * “Landscape with Questions” by Patrick Ryan Frank
Ruby Hartman (age 9)
VANILLA CAKE
Vanilla cake gone in a day because of giant family. From gobbling, chewing to devouring then wolfing down the taste of acceptance after the grab.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Ruby Hartman: “It is an easier way to express myself. And there aren’t many rules, which means I’m free to say what I want without worrying about mistakes!”
Related* “Vanilla Sweetpie the Dragon” by Isley Ellington * “Vanilla” by Jack Rhodehamel * “Imaginary Deafness” by Elliot L. Armitage
Danielle Jones
BAPTIZED
When he eased me into the riverI was supposed to feel God coming clean in mebut all I could see was the black kitten, scrawnywhen its mama went off and left it, fliesin its eyes, and daddy saying the best thing to dowas put it out of its misery, so I named itMercy, while he held it under water—his handa stone, so big I couldn’t see its struggle, but could feel it, same way I always feel the wounded or afraid—soon as I walk in a room, we’re family—flight of swallows, storm of fish, bubbles rising from their mouths, a stream in the water, the kitten’s last breath, and mine, as he pulls me up—his hand, a hookbetween my shoulder blades, and he calls meby my baptized name, but the drowning in my blood has already named me something else.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Danielle Jones: “When I found the book—its corner torn, its red cover creased—my sister was gone. I held the poetry anthology because she was no longer there to hold me, tell stories, or sing me to sleep. I gobbled up the words left behind (not much else for a child to eat in that house of grief). I dined on Dickinson, Cummings, Dunn, Sexton and Orr, Frost, Clifton, Rich, Keats. Their poems filled the bowl inside me.”
Related* “Prayer for an Inmate of RVJDC” by Danielle Spratley * “The Book Pitch” by Joan Murray * “Joe Arridy” by Joseph Fasano
John L. Stanizzi
TRIOLET FOR CAROL
So many things that still feel new are old, and that’s the way it goes. This is what always happens to so many things that still feel new. I think of how I have loved you all these years, and that just shows so many things that still feel new feel new because of the life we chose. —from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems
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John L. Stanizzi: “The poem is from a manuscript in progress called Hallelujah Time! based on the albums of Bob Marley—specifically Burnin’, Exodus, Confrontation, and Survival. The poems are loosely inspired by Bob’s songs, and when it’s appropriate the biblical inspiration Bob used to get to the writing of the song. The poems in the book appear in the same order as the songs on the albums. Completion of Hallelujah Time! is about two years ago. Jah Bless!”
Related* “Defiantly” by John L. Stanizzi * “S-Plan” by John L. Stanizzi * “Triolet for Laika, First Dog in Space” by Ann Eichler Kolakowski
Shannan Mann
IN THE HOUSE OF GOD
Doubt—dirt—blood—there is no bliss in the house of God.How do you keep your shit together? You piss in the house of God.He walks and does not walk. To hear him, not ears but fear.To see? Wear fire. Bullet and ballad kiss in the house of God.A million arrows we shot from here—each one missed in the House of God.Unaware Eve danced in the garden beforea serpent hissed in the house of God.Culted and sculpted, I left a temple in tears and scars.No one reached forth—such abyss in the house of God.Communist heart—why weep in vain, in vanity for the lost?Everyone else’s prayers too are dismissed in the house of God.Begins like a joke but ends in guns—three men walk—an American, a Nazi, a Swiss—in the house of God.Apsaras, smoke, mirrors, rivers of alcohol, battle-soakedaxes, dirty underwear—all of this in the house of God?Your farewell: Shannan, I’ll meet you beyond all that is rightor wrong. Beloved, betrayer, I await our tryst in the house of God.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Shannan Mann: “Karan Kapoor introduced me to the form of the ghazal by sending me his most-favorite Agha Shahid Ali poem, ‘After You,’ which is a short, explosive ghazal. I immediately took to the form and started practicing it. Not much later I found I was working toward a book of ghazals which is now near complete. I am happy the form is still thriving, even in a ‘foreign’ language.” (web)
Related* “Your Body” by Shannan Mann * “I Ask AI to Write a Poem for My Lover” by Shannan Mann * “Your Hands” by Shannan Mann
John Philip Johnson
MIDAS ON THE BEACH
When Midas went to the beacheveryone in his kingdom was nervous.They liked the foot-shaped patches of golden sand,scooped up like cattle patties,and they were used to the nimble ruckusof the entourage, staying somewhat closebut avoiding the bump. Their fear was for the sea,for his first step, for the yellow muck hardeningaround his ankles like it did in his brief Saturday night baths.They would rescue him, of course, if the water trapped his feet—throw him chains which they would later add to the treasuryonce he’d grabbed them and been draggedover the sharp, concreted waves.It was a matter of some speculation for them,but as he stared across the water,their anxiety rose, and they mutteredabout the loss of the fishing industry,imagining the blue sea becoming gold.It was the philosopher’s punishment, anyway:He’d been estranged with his daughterlong before he’d hugged her to death. Like everythingelse in his kingdom, she’d become an objectof evaluation. Even the words he used to describe thingswere like little boxes of confinement, little rockshe threw at the moon, separating him further,bringing him pieces, lodestones. And the guiltof his isolation—he’d sworn off concubines,it was that look in their far-off eyes, the crackling realizationreaching their minds that they’d been bought,while he caressed the distant, perfect object in his hands.He went often to the beach and stared like other people doat the meditation before him.The sun’s long dangling finger across the water,the honeyed line, shimmering like a zipperon what he was coming to understand about it:one conclusion, or another, here a god, there a god,everywhere a god-god—he was aloofness itself,and by that held the upper hand, the sponge,squeezing it while soapy runs splatteredinto gold chaos on the gray rocks; the servantsscrambled, able but wary, picking up his treasured flotsam.Age made it worse. Aloha girls waved,ever receding, their swaying hipsmaking the horizon like the hem of a grass skirt.At least there was the gold. And he was the king,king of the homunculus, giver of sciences,wolfing down salad leaves before they lodgedin the back of his throat, cutting off fingernails,letting them fall with a shrill clatteronto the smooth golden floor which mirrored his feet.He would cough, and wonder if his spray of golden spittlewould ignite the air into golden brightnessand make him fall with the last tinkling musicinto the consummated, unabdicated otherness.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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John Philip Johnson: “One afternoon, a long time ago, before you were born, I was reading Byron. I couldn’t believe it when, in Don Juan, I found him rhyme gunnery with nunnery. I thought, good grief, anybody can do this. I wrote reams of poetry, lost most of it, and published some. Recently I woke up in middle age, with the children (cinque bambini!) finally able to dress and feed themselves. So, I’ve been scribbling again, a lot, and editing this time, like a born English major.” (web)
Related* “There Have Come Soft Rains” by John Philip Johnson and Julian Peters * “Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town” by John Philip Johnson and Julian Peters * “There Have Come Soft Rains” by John Philip Johnson
Mike Hopkins
AT THE DOG TRACK
Wednesday and Saturday eveningswere like winter all year round,the chill air chased cigarette smoke and stale beer smell across the concrete standsof White City Stadium, above the yelps of greyhounds, the baying of bookies,the manic twitching of tic-tac mensignaling the odds back to the boss,the chalkboards chopped and changed, number three, five to four, four to one the field.Greyhounds were just numbers,no “Secretariat,” “Sea Biscuit,” “Phar Lap,”just dog one, dog two, dog three, dog four, dog five, dog six.My job was the lowliest, holding a gatewaybetween lower stand and upper stand,my toes freezing in my school shoes, only punters paying extra allowed throughto the better bar, the better view,the better toilets, the bigger bets.The races dully repetitive,dogs pushed into the backs of boxes,an electric hare set whirring on its inside railtripping the trapdoor as it sped past,the hounds falling for the same old trick,haring after the uncatchable, inedible lure,bolting for the inside line,scrambling around the bends,kicking up dirt in the straight.Two futile laps, the photo finish flash,then scooped up by the handlers,led back to the under-stand kennelsand who knows what fate for the failures.I counted the minutes from six until eight, a tea break, past the kennels, the dog handlers,the stench of dog piss and shit,fifteen minutes nursing a chipped white cup of pale tea,listening to the old lags, fag ash falling from the corners of their mouthsas they droned on, every other word “fuckin,”“hotfuckintipmatefuckinnumberfourisasurefuckinthinginthefuckinlast”The last race at ten, then home,thirty windswept minutes along the A4on my Lambretta Li 125,the one pound fifty in my pocket barely enough to cover petrol for a week,and a copy of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly,less if I’d listened to a hot fuckin’ tip.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Mike Hopkins: “I’ve had some terrible jobs in my life, but none more depressing than at the dog track. The first job I ever had was two nights a week, guarding a gate between the lower and upper parts of a stand at the White City Stadium dog track in West London in the ’60s. The stadium has since been demolished. My previous lives include many years as an IT analyst and shorter spells as an up-and-coming slam poet and a teacher of English in Vietnam.” (web)
Related* “The Town Drunk’s Last Stand” by Peter Funk * “How Beautifully Your Fire Burns” by Iustin Panta * “Uncle Ivan and the Last Dog Race” by Travis Burke
Rex Wilder
HARD LABOR
A chrysanthemum petal makes me think of a swappedprisoner. What was given up for this beauty pressingagainst the marble countertop like a face? My countryregularly brings an innocent home in return for coldblood, an art teacher for an assassin. A bottle of sky-blue Windex stands by the photo frame by the bananaslike a guard. Prisoners clean their own cells, I’m told.To wit, I feel your soft hand on mine as I shine the glassat all hours, removing the smudge of our separated lives.—from Poets Respond
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Rex Wilder: “Inspired by the prisoner swap with Russia.”
Related* “The Birth of Sisters” by Alexandra Wilder * “Gravitational Time Dilation” by Katherine Lo * “Recycling Pornography” by Stephanie Lenox
Sophia Hall (age 14)
LOOSE BRICK
On the last Saturday of August,an ambulance sirened past Valley Forge.Your red Toyota was our caboose.The cyclists who found me, squashed,waved and went on.Above me, a clean-shaven man in white smiled.He told me I was brave.Your electric toothbrushvanished from Mom’s medicine cabinet.My kitsch cast was claustrophobic with sharpie.The maple trees out my window turned red.How did the Continental soldiers survivesix months of wind whipped backs?Were chalk blue fingerssuffering as usual?Maybe if there was no Days Innno road trip no grasshopper girlno garden wall no loose brickno tumble no pavementno falling no crumpleno left arm, cracked in twomaybe you would have stayed.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Sophia Hall: “Writing poetry not only allows me to express gratitude for the seemingly ordinary moments that compose my life but also lets me heal from childhood and current events. In my poetry, I believe that the personal is powerful and political. I hope that when people read my poetry, they find companionship and feel a little less alone.”
Related* “Ghazal for New Moon” by Sophia Liu * “Dreams” by Sophia Hopkins * “The Waiter” by Sophia Buss
Alison Luterman
VIBRATO GHAZAL
Like a trembling tower of fruity gelato,ladies and gentleman—my vibrato.Even though my voice teacher says not towarble like a church lady, my vibratoblurs the pure tone, a little rubato(how we hate to be confined)—because my vibratohas a mind of her own, even sottovoce you can hear the tremulous vibrato.Like a wren chirruping to her inamorato— hard to quell that pesky vibrato.Or an operatic artiste, alone in her grotto,practicing arias, throbs forth the vibrato.Lee, glancing at this notebook, asks if I sought towrite an ode to my vibrator? No, babe! My vibrato!Sing smooth as honey, that’s my motto,but there she goes again! Vibrato, vibrato.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Alison Luterman: “I started playing around with the ghazal form recently and became enamored of its flexibility and capaciousness as a form. It can be sensual, humorous, erotic, spiritual, political, or all of the above. This one just arose spontaneously out of whatever I was thinking about at the time.” (web)
Related* “False Vibrato” by Angelique Jean Lindberg * “One Among a Thousand Possible Versions” by Alison Luterman * “Pulling Weeds” by Alison Luterman
Bob Hicok
TRUE STORY
I can’t escape the possibilityI was meant to own a Zambonibut got stuck with three can openers instead.Or that I should have kissed your knees last night when you got home from being with your friend who just had her cat killed. I know I’m supposed to write “put to sleep,”but can she wake her up now? No.And it was kind of you to rush overright after work and you deserved praisein some form and your knees don’t get enough attention, I guessI’m saying. Where would we have goneon the Zamboni? Dunno, but howis certain: slowly. Here’s a headlineyou never have to worry about: Three Canadians Killed in Zamboni Drag Racing Accident.I’d buy a newspaper to tell the world how much I love you. Tons. Geegobs.And how many cats have we cried over so far? Four, and one dog, and soonwe’ll start adding parents to that list, then one of us will look at empty chairs around the house and hate them. So knees, elbows, hair, and of course the more famous bits: I kiss thee in life and in poems, which are not life, more like a flashlightturned on in a black hole. Geegobsis a lot. Geegobs squared is moreaccurate. But is amount reallythe correct measure of love? I love you greenly, gymnastically, variously and Stradavariusly, I love you with my heart shadow and my brain fog and my suitcase-packing skills. The suitcase I’m packing for when you go to the next room and I have to follow.Poor kitty. Poor friend. Poor us.Who have to deal with mortalityusing a limited toolkit. There’s crying,drinking, toking, injecting, breakingdishes and popsicle sticks, and lovinglonger and softer those who remain.How long ago did there cease to be a timeI can remember being without you?1897, I think, the year the jumping jackwas invented, the year levitatingwas added to the Olympics, the yearI first dreamed I was alive and saw you coming around the corner and thought, So this is the famous happiness I’ve heard so much about.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”
Related* “How the Mirror Looks This Morning” by Bob Hicok * “A Family Matter” by Bob Hicok * “Political Action” by Bob Hicok
Al Ortolani
SWITCH PLATE
The day moves by me, and I’m still at the same old desk that was two-wheeledinto my room by the custodian. The lightsrun on some kind of motion detector.If no one moves, let’s say, in ten minutes,they blink out, and I have to raise my armsand wave them like crazy. Possibly,they click back on. Possibly, they don’t.At this point, I have to get up and walk the room in the dark until the shadow of meis recognized in the recesses of the switchplate. Once in a while I’ll have a classof high school kids writing essays,and the lights will suddenly black out, and they will all look up astonished like they’ve really done something cool.—from Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street
2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
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Al Ortolani: “These poems represent connections to others, sometimes dark, sometimes light, often quirky. A fellow teacher, and mentor to the poet, once said that one of the most difficult measures of the career public school teacher is their ability to stay positive and elevated by interest, if not always in the subject matter, then in the hand raised outside of the T zone.” (web)
Related* “Yellow Bees” by Al Ortolani * “Butterfly Valve” by Al Ortolani * “Leaf Removal” by Al Ortolani
Mary Keating
FULL OF IT
The moon swallowed the sun in one mouthful;kept her maw open wide—spit him out full. On the days she feared he’d devour her,she fed him sweet treats to keep his snout full.On empty, they crossed over the border to the States promising to be fruitful.No one using a wheelchair came inside—accessible parking always doubtful.Motel owners didn’t announce their hatred;Just let their no vacancy lights shout full.Caretakers wondered how many more warstill graveyards complained they were about full.He asked to be buried with his husband;his parents suddenly turned devoutful.Most children rarely notice what parentsgive up to make their kids’ lives bountiful.The police shuddered when the school shooterheaded to classrooms they just counted full. How do you comfort parents of a child who didn’t have a chance to make them proudful?One day a year, we give thanks for our gifts—stuffing ourselves to prove we are grateful.I’d write more couplets about falling short,but the sun’s grumbling this day’s chockful.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Mary Keating: “I love how ghazals make the poet omniscient. I can view a subject from all points of view, all disconnected, but somehow connected. This is how I imagine God views the universe and all the lives passing through time. To me the ghazal is a microcosm of the vast machinations of temporal existence. Magically, we gain a better understanding of life when we read or write a ghazal.” (web)
Related* “Under the Shadows” by Nika Cruz * “Howlin’ Moon” by Christine Wideman * “If Body Dysmorphia Follows Me to Death” by Megan Mary Moore
Katie Hartsock
PARAGON
To eat sweet corn straight offthe cob, just shucked—no one ever told me I could do that, likeno one ever. Another day the world seems too full of protocolsboiled and buttered and salted. How many times I sat with my grandfatherby the front yard rock where we hammered walnuts apartand shucked so many earsfor the huge pot my grandmother watchedinside and never once, the sonof tenant farmers, did he say, Just eat itnow, go ahead—he who loved immediacies,gifts that arrived unmediated, charmedwith readiness. No I had to read about it, and on I read, grieved and grieved and gratefulstill for the world, so much hiddenness to live in. And stopped this afternoon to give one of two bonneted daughtersa ten, three ones, and three quarters for seven ears of corn and a small bouquet of sunflowers, sticky with their stalk juice. A while later and I never knew summercould be like this, undivided,as it always seemed in my youthbetween cooked and raw, fun and boredom, never been kissed and yes, healthy and un, light and shadows of television after dinner. I took sunflowers to my mother, who used to be one, please Godmay she be again. Then in an unhurried rainmy sons and I sat on the front porch and shucked this corn, our shirts dampled with quiet and I said, You know you can just eat it now. —from Poets Respond
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Katie Hartsock: “Small revelations—such as, you can eat corn fresh straight off the cob, which is an idea that did not exist in the Ohio town where I grew up—can profoundly reorient in times of disorientation, and comfort in uncomfortable times.” (web)
Related* “Download the App and We’ll Plant a Tree” by Katie Hartsock * “State of the Union” by Timothy Liu * “Tracking the Soybean Assassin” by Clemonce Heard
Abby Habtehans (age 15)
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
My father drank salt water mixed with airAnd sacrificed his legs and calloused hands at the altar of the sea,So that it may split in half to give me the life he had only dreamed of.Immigrant was the first name he was called.He would say he is a man of faith first,And I would say he is first a man of good heartHe wraps his baby boys in American flags but dreams in tigrinyaand his heart beats blood in hues of saffron and golden threadsI wonder if he remembers the smell of his sisters,The plushness of his bedOr the vastness of those fieldsIf he misses even the sewers …Don’t call me an immigrantCall me a blossom bearing tree,robed in petals of pink and whiteCall me sunny butterflyWith swallowtailHe still smells of boat rocksThe raw beating of an immigrant’s sonmade news this morning.Maybe if love was purer,like it was before the bombs and the bullets,when the smallest bugs whispered those great nothings of romance,then we could all find what we’re looking forson, look before you step:the globe’s ill—brother, the great dove’s readyto fly without perch’ng!the world’s ill—son, a live goatshall be eaten up by a dead ratAn immigrant’s son was beaten the other day.My father’s immigrant son, beaten the same way.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Abby Habtehans: “I like to write poetry because it allows me to learn so much about myself and puts shape to the thoughts in my head.”
Related* “What the Dead Man Taught Me” by Abby E. Murray * “War Film” by Freya Jackson * “McDonald’s Circa the ’80s” by Elena Castro
Bob Hicok
AT THE RECEPTION
Everyone else had gone to dance around a man and woman lifted on chairs, into the sky of the future of their love, when he pushed away his plate, rolled up his white sleeve, showed me the number on his arm and rubbed it as if asking it to grant himthree wishes. I imagine he would have been tempted in the camp to mourn all of the ashes the wind carried on its shoulders across Poland, not knowing which were his mother, father, sister, had he not been so busy dying of hunger. I wanted to listen to the locomotive of his heart, to go to sleep on the pillow of his breath, and should have kissed him on the lips like a lover of life, or at least pulled a rose out of my ear to show him the magic of his survival had endured. But I think he would have said it wasn’t magic, it was luck, that evil was so busy back then it couldn’t get around to all the Jews, no matter how hard it tried. As I watched him shuffle away, I wonderedwhat normal was for him, for anyone who’d seen human beings become bored with cruelty in that factory of death. Later I saw him dancing with his canesince he couldn’t dance with the ashes of his wife. He’d shown me her picture. She looked the way most people look in photos. Plain. Happy. Alive. —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”
Related* “Lovely Day” by Bob Hicok * “Things Rich and Multiple and Alone” by Bob Hicok * “Show and Tell” by Bob Hicok
Marvin Bell
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD MAN (PEACETIME)
Live as if you were already dead.
—Zen admonition
- About the Dead Man in Peacetime, If and WhenIf and when the war is over, the dead man’s days will seem longer.When the ammo is spent, the funds discharged, when the fields have shut down and the flares fallen, an hour will take an hour.Time for the dead man lengthens when the shooting stops.The waiting for the next war to begin can seem endless, though it take but a week, a month or a year.The low intensity conflicts, the raids and assassinations, the deployments andwithdrawals, the coups and revolutions, the precursors and aftermaths—it’s a lifetime of keeping track.It’s as if the sun fell and fizzled—somewhere.Then the black, white and gray propaganda, the documents planted on corpses, the reading of tea leaves and bones …The dead man takes stock in the darkness of peacetime.The Judas goats stand waiting in the corrals.We are the sheep that gambol through dreamless nights.A quietude hangs in the air, an expectancy, the shimmer that some believe presages alien life forms.The calm before the stampede.It was wartime when love arrived, yes, love.It was wartime when the virtuosi performed, standing on their heads, as it were, for peace time is our upside-down time.2. More About the Dead Man In Peacetime, If and WhenOn a field of armed conflict, in the midst of rushing water, at the lip of a canyon, by the border of a fire-torched desert, in the overdark of a where else was there ever but here?Do you think poetry is for the pretty?Look up and down, then, avoiding the hillocks that hold the remains.The dead man, too, sees the puffy good nature of the clouds.He welcomes, too, the spring blooming that even the grass salutes.The dead man has made peace with temporary residence and the eternal Diaspora.Oh, to live in between, off the target, blipless on the radar, silent on the sonar.To keep one’s head down when the satellites swoop over.Not even to know when the last war is reincarnated and the next one conceived.The dead man sings of a romantic evening in the eerie flickering of the last candle.He whistles, he dances, he writes on the air as the music passes.It was in wartime that the dead man conceived sons.The dead man lifts a glass to the beauties of ruin.The dead man is rapt, he is enveloped, he is keen to be held.—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
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Marvin Bell: “It’s true that, no matter what, the literary world is full of insult. When you put yourself out to the public, you’re going to get some negative stuff. But writing just feels wonderful. I mean, I love the discovery aspect of writing. I love that. I love saying what I didn’t know I knew, not knowing where I’m headed, abandoning myself to the materials to figure out where I’m going. Of course your personality is going to come out of it, of course your obsessions are going to make themselves known, of course if you have a philosophic mind a matrix of philosophy will be behind things; everyone has a stance, an attitude, a vision, a viewpoint. All that will come out. But in the meantime, you’re just dog-paddling like mad. And that’s fun. That’s what I always liked about every art.”
Related* “What the Dead Man Taught Me” by Abby E. Murray * “Creatures” by Marvin Bell * “The Disintegrated Man” by Michael Bazzett
Bethany Jarmul
GHAZAL: LIKE A PRAYER
We cry out for peace like a prayer.We yank weeds on our knees like a prayer.Rays crisp Renée’s pepper plants to umber;sprouts speak their final pleas like a prayer. Old men watch from porches as September burns out; leaves strip bare, surrender beneath trees like a prayer. Snowflakes speckle the sky. Lifeless, the children’s angels lie. Icicles unfreeze like a prayer. Bethany, don’t bend to the breeze. Begin on your knees,then stand up, voice up, fists up—use these like a prayer.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Bethany Jarmul: “I find the repetition and rhyme of a ghazal to be melodic and enjoyable to read and a fun challenge to write. When I learned about the history of the ghazal, that it was traditionally a communal art form, I was intrigued. This form that often engages with love, longing, metaphysical questions, and spirituality, seemed to invite me into it, to allow me to play with words and meanings using this powerful form. I feel honored to even attempt to write poetry in this form that has such a rich history.” (web)
Related* “The Prayer” by Rachel Rose * “Prayer for an Inmate of RVJDC” by Danielle Spratley * “Prayer for Anything but Prayer” by Chris Emslie
Image: “Terry’s Keys” by Kim Beckham. “What You Thought You Lost” was written by Wendy Videlock for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
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Wendy Videlock
WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU LOST
What you thought you lost along the wayhangs in the air like a prayerMay you find your way homemay the doors swing open wide from the out and the in sideunder a wide open skyMay you lose may you find,may you know in the coreof your weathered soul your oldand your new signMay every stranger on the pathbecome the one who stoppedto hang something you thoughtyou lost in the air by a thread like an ancientpagan prayer like some kind ofelder warm-eyedguardian was standing there.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “‘What You Thought You Lost’ begins with comparing what was lost to a prayer–an apt simile, given that this poem feels like a prayer, with its reverent language, melodic sound, and spiritual references. What a transcendent connection, too, the poet draws between the concrete image of keys hanging on a beach fence and the abstract concept of something lost (we don’t know what, but somehow we have a sense of it) hanging in the air ‘by a thread like an ancient/pagan prayer.’ There’s already an intangible quality to artist Kim Beckham’s beach scene, a sense of possibility, but the metaphysical tone of the poem adds greater complexity to the photo. One of the things I love most about the ekphrastic challenge is how differently I can see a piece of art after I read a poem about it, and ‘What You Thought You Lost’ made me look at this image in a way I never could have without it.”
Related* “Bigger Than Us” by Emily Walker * “The Question Ever” by Wendy Videlock * “Of You” by Wendy Videlock
Bob Hicok
POLITICAL ACTION
Every time it snows, she walks twelve blocksand makes a snow angel in front of the Supreme Court for her son who was shot and killed two blocks away seven years ago by a boy who was shot and killed three weeks later. Does anyone know for sure if vulture shadows are prettier than the real thing? Thanks to the telephone, she can cry togetherin different cemeteries with her sisterfor different sons. There are so many options. Wear blue socks to the Rapture or no socks or a different pair of blue socks or no socks. Visit everyone she’s not listened to fully and ask, Will you say that again? meaning everything. Turn the shade of redwoods into a perfume and spread it over DC from a plane. Do you think she could do that? I think she could do that, but she’s very busy being clawed to death from the inside out. The heart is a mouth with an appetite for itself and winter is coming. By that I mean, winter is always here.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”
Related* “Redundancy Is Only a Problem When It Gets Repetitious:” by Bob Hicok * “Going Big” by Bob Hicok * “How the Mirror Looks This Morning” by Bob Hicok
Sophie Kaiser Rojas
ELEGY BEGINNING ON A LINE BY ROSS GAY
The bullet craves the warmth of a body,but forgets the body it leaves. Allowme the metaphor, this alivenessof everything—the last leg of the trail, scarringthe mountain’s rigid face. A friend tells metwo Spanish names for the steaming blueaperture in an alpine hot spring: el ojode agua & donde nace el agua. I touch the mouthof the coffee mug to mine, too distractedwith dodging the clotted whiteflecks of coconut milk to see them spare memy reflection. Headlines yank my heartinto my ears like the drum of distant re-works, so I walk to the holler, permission to clearmy mind. The mouth of the creek is one bodyentering another. That is, a small river, emptiedof all it carried. Spanish has a structurethat makes your happeningshappen to you, takes what we’ve doneand does it to us. See: se me rompe el país—my country is breakingitself to me. I want to be blamelessas every birth, every baby cryingfor help as it leaves one warmthfor want of another. A poem,in its hunger, craves the soft boneof the paper, but misses itselfto the chamber of its pen. The first act ofmotherhood is a womb,giving up. We’re all bornbarreling toward beauty and a lifeof yielding—how can a word mean gainand surrender? I’ve strolledthis stream for years and never witnessedmore than dragonflies and crawdads. But today, I’m struckby the slick of a turtle’s obsidianshell under the surface, stippled with coppersun. In certain light, everything’s the color of a gunand what is lost to her.—from Poets Respond
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Sophie Kaiser Rojas: “Say her name: Sonya Massey. Justice for her, and her mother, and her kids.”
Related* “Broken Sonnets with Apology for Simile” by Sophie Kaiser Rojas * “Tenderness” by Chris Kaiser * “Elegy for a Spacecraft” by Raye Hendrix
John Philip Johnson
STAIRS APPEAR IN A HOLE OUTSIDE OF TOWN
Stairs that never stop going down,concrete steps, concrete walls:down twelve, turn right, down twelve more,fluorescent bulbs humming on every landing—you can look between metal railingsand see down into the vanishing point. It’s creepybecause it’s so bland, because it is so otherwiseplausible. There are little clusters of touristsand townsfolk, walking up and down,murmuring their speculations. The municipalityhas stationed a few policemen in the upper stories,after that it’s the wilderness of young menwho aren’t huffing, or letting their better judgmentshold them back. Some pack a lunch,see how far they can go. A few lonershave gone for days, or longer, obsessed, and come backwith critical perspectives on prior stories brought up,arguing against them, bringing rumors of their own,rumors of the lights shifting imperceptibly,of ambiguous odors, of vast ballroomsand wide open spaces, of small villageswith picnic areas, of hot steamy dioramas of hell,strange animals, grotesque and sublime,of a rapture that some theorize is the bendsbut they swear is as real as the bright pounding lightthat fills everything down that deep, wherethe stairs are made of light, the walls a glowyou can’t quite touch—this is weeks down,beyond some rapture or rupture point,beyond some point from which they neverreally come all the way back.—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012
Tribute to Speculative Poetry
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John Philip Johnson: “I hear a lot of poets say they’d rather be jazz musicians, but if I could be something else it would be an astronaut. I’d rather land on Mars than win a Nobel Prize. I got into poetry because I had a great high school teacher named Kirsten Van Dervoort. In college I came to believe I could write the stuff when I read Byron rhyme ‘gunnery’ with ‘nunnery.’ I thought, golly, anybody can do this.” (web)
Related* “Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town” by John Philip Johnson and Julian Peters * “There Have Come Soft Rains” by John Philip Johnson and Julian Peters * “There Have Come Soft Rains” by John Philip Johnson
Nate Jacob
YOU MUST NEVER IGNORE SELF
It may be in the sky, in sand, in dream you’ll find your Self.For some, the search may never end. Don’t give up! Trust yourself!Whatever you do, don’t sell your soul in discovery.There will be those who’ll claim you, as if you are some “whore” self.Better in desperate moments to deny shallow urgesthat might cheapen you in their eyes, like some discount store self.Maybe you are only just starting out on this journey.Find people who will invest in you, in your ground floor self.Keep your vision clear, no matter how many layers peelback from the onion, until you discover your core self.I get it, we all want to be completely authentic,to tell our ultimate truth, to avoid our folklore self.I only fear that in the midst of that terrible battleyou let go of peaceful You, settle for some post-war self.Where the warrior goes, I could never follow. I’m too old.Maybe you were never meant for my meek dinosaur self.In the end, what matters most to Nate? What else makes more sensethan to dig deep, no matter the cost? You must explore Self.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Nate Jacob: “Toward the end of 2022, a ghazal appeared in Rattle titled ‘Ghazal for Dida,’ by Karan Kapoor. Until that moment, I had never read a ghazal, never listened to a ghazal read, had never even heard of the form at all, but in that moment, I discovered a new reaction to a poem: I was gobsmacked! I was startled at the depth of feeling the structure of the form created in me, the way the qaafiyaa and the radif combined to create a near trance-like invocation within the poem. Plus the personal way a ghazal traditionally ends, with the naming of the self, adds so much of an ‘I, the poet, am here’ touch to a poem. And so I set out to attempt one of my own. This is the first ghazal I ever attempted, and in the attempt, I found that magical connection that ‘Ghazal for Dida’ created in me.” (web)
Related* “Fried Elvis” by Jacob Sunderlin * “Golden Shovel: Self-Portrait in Fourth Grade” by Bella Cosentino * “The Pool” by Jacob K. Robinson
Lynn Levin
BUYING PRODUCE FROM THE MARKED-DOWN CART
The Minor Virtues
I rescue them at times from the back of the store— cellophaned oranges and apples packaged good-side-up. I imagine them as little brains thinking of the days when they were on the tree and full of promise. Mostly I leave the rusty beans, blotched pears to the gleaners, calling to mind my days as a gleaner at Dominicks and Star when I approached with furtive hunch the scratched and bruised, bought them with my meager pay. What a bounty of salads and pies they made me who saved them from the heap. More than anything I hate waste and yet how much of my own life have I let go unused. —from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
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Lynn Levin: “I love to describe things in my poems. Somehow I think that expands or extends life as we know it. Right now I am interested in celebrating small practices in a series of poems I am calling The Minor Virtues. These poems seek to capture pleasant things, although some of these pleasant things may have a dark border.” (web)
Related* “Like America” by Lynn Marie Houston * “Housekeeping” by Rachel Lynn Nevins * “The Fruit Detective” by Lola Haskins
Chera Hammons
UPON READING THAT FRUIT FLIES AGE FASTER ONCE THEY HAVE SEEN DEATH
Horse girls have money,a former student tells me with assurancethe same day I read about the flies. He is stroking the mustang I adopted for $25 from the U.S. government five years ago, and I think with sudden shock, He means me.I have been so lost in worry about paying the bills that it is astonishing to remember how charmed this life is, how free and lovely these fields.I’m ashamed of myself, of how easily I forgot that I am privileged once I saw myself so far beyond repair,health squandered, with no savings left, no retirement coming,and the lean time that terrifies me seems so near.But it’s not here yet. Isn’t that the sort of hope many others are denied?I have a home filled with marvelous gifts,but all I can do is despair about losing it.Oh, forgive me for such forgetfulness.You see, I used to work in bookkeepingand I have done the math to reconcile this, again and again, just as people do who justify anything.It’s been over a year since I ate food I didn’t cook myself. I don’t travel. I don’t drink alcohol.I don’t go to movies or concerts or conferences or shows. I bought my phone well-used several years ago. Most of my possessions, I got for free in exchange for an honest review.I don’t have health insurance.I cut my own hair. I didn’t have children.I didn’t have children. A horse, then, is a hold on the world.When I was a teller I lived in my car so that I could afford the board for one.Googling what horse girl means,I wonder how many versions of it there are.I wonder if we all have our own version of poor, too,which, like love, can differ wildly from another’s.For seven years in my youth, this is what I learned:you can get so fed up of bargain ramenyou can no longer keep it down,and that is a waste of ramen. Truck stops have showers anyone can use.Malnourishment makes for ugly toenails,which is especially frustratingwhen the only affordable shoes are flip-flops.Pawn shops deal in well, it’s better than nothings.If you make friends with a supermarket manager in a small town,he’ll give you the box of hamburger patties that were returnedafter customers complained they tasted of kerosene.Yes, even those days, I knew deep downI had more than what I needed. It was the gluttony of ramen that made me sick.A gluttony of meat. A gluttony of prayer.I’m ashamed to admit that even having known plentyI still don’t know what enough is,only what it isn’t. What I want is more, always more. I tell myself I want only enough to be safe. How much would that take? God help me. The safest sound in the universeis the click and whoosh of central heat.One day in New Mexico I held a skinny black horse so that my first husband could shoot it in the foreheadwith a gun he borrowed from the neighbor.We used to get problem horses dirt cheap,train them and resell them.This horse had been there for just two weeksbefore we learned he carried 40 pounds of sand in his gut,gathered from years of eating hay thrown on the desert groundby whoever had owned him longest.That is the carelessness of hunger.It comes from another carelessness.When that man grew weary of our violent and famished lives,family loaned me the money to file for divorce and bankruptcy, which are also luxuries. Debt is necessary to discharge a greater debt.Did you know, if you give a horse too much to eat,the horse will kill himself gorging on it?You can yearn for what you have while you wait to lose it.It’s difficult not to feel sorry for yourselfwhile hating yourself for feeling sorry for yourself.Damn it all. And that’s just the way it is:The skin, the teeth, the toenails,the importance of appearances.Of youth, which can do anything,you assume, at first; it seems so wide and wealthy,but it only saves up what little it can,if it can save anything at all, and that runs out too soon.Your credit cards all charge annual fees,if you’re lucky enough to get credit cards.You make the minimum payment while the balance grows. You get used to living on credit alone,which one day runs out, too.Desperation is such a hard habit to get rid of.Around here, so many are losing homes to flooding and to storms, but not me, not yet, and yet—Horse girl, horse girl!What a luxury it is, of course, even to try to name what it is that matters most.To choose what to sacrifice,even while believing more is never coming.Please forgive these trespasses, these unkindnesses and excesses and stinginesses.The secret closets of almost-empty bottles I can’t throw away because they can change the way a world looks.Ask any mare that has been hitched to a cartwhat this all means. See how she stands flicking the biting flies with her tail while she waits,wearing the blinders which are meant to keep her from learning what she is attached to.Meant to keep her from fearing whatever dark box it is that is rolling, rolling, rolling, soinextricably behind her.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Chera Hammons: “This poem is the result of a weird confluence of events. Since I read the fruit fly article, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I’ve wondered what traumas I have that I don’t know I’m showing. And I thought about how difficult it is to escape trauma, how it changes a person, just as it changed the flies. And how many traumas there must be in the world.” (web)
Related* “The Descent of the Germanwings” by Chera Hammons * “The Moon of a Moon is a Moonmoon” by Chera Hammons * “Anything Worth Saving” by Chera Hammons
Mary Meriam
ARS POETICA
She took me home—or what I thought was home, but was in fact a hell she made for us. We left The Sound of Music with the fuss that I was making, working out my poem in sobs. She asked me what was wrong. I said, “I want to be there,” in the Alps, singing, twirling with her in sunshine. I was clinging to song, with nothing real to hold instead. She gave me pain—no comforting the way most mothers do, I guess. And so I wept like no tomorrow, out of love. We left for rainy sidewalks to the car, the day falling in dusk, the pity I had to make, the bleak, deserted street I had to take. —from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
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Mary Meriam: “The scene in ‘Ars Poetica’ has been haunting me for a long time, so it’s a relief to have finally brought that ghost to the light of day. Now some of the pain I felt has been transformed into the formal pleasures of a sonnet.” (web)
Related* “Homemaker” by Mary Meriam * “Alone in Love” by Mary Meriam * “The Romance of Middle Age” by Mary Meriam
Cindy Gore
GHAZAL FOR BREVITY
A mantra sets in with just one word.A dream can end with just one word.A human’s lifetime of asking questions—why?—will begin with just one word.The babysitter fastened baby’s diaper and made him grin with just one word.A rude, intrusive busybody got underthe neighbor’s skin with just one word. Tell the bartender pouring gin and tonic“how many parts gin” with just one word.As the crescendo builds, the wicked villain in the film commits sin with just one word.Teacher, you have learned over and overthat one fails to listen with just one word.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Cindy Gore: “Although I had read the word ghazal in poem titles before, I was unfamiliar with the particulars of the form because I’ve never been formally trained in poetry. I became interested in learning more when poet Campbell McGrath commented about Alexis Sears’s ‘Heartbreak Ghazal’ on the Rattlecast after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.”
Related* “Give-and-Take Ghazal” by Denise Duhamel & Julie Marie Wade * “This Country: Ghazal for Abdel Halim Hafez” by Zeina Hashem Beck * “Ghazal 5: of the Dead Boy” by Federico García Lorca
Annette Makino
HAIKU
dry thunderthe latest pollsroll in—from Poets Respond
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Annette Makino: “I’m spending the week at a cabin on the Klamath River in Northern California, where a summer storm surprised us on Monday. It’s beautiful here, but dry thunder—and dry lightning—are very ominous in this rugged, mountainous region prone to wildfires. The weather seemed to echo my sense of dread from the political news.” (web)
Related* “A Fragment of the Quilt” by Geoffrey Philp * “Road Closure, Aleppo” by Megan Merchant * “She Wore Yellow” by Abbie Minard
Annika Ziff Glueck (age 12)
WE HAVE SAID SO MANY GOODBYES
for my grandmother lost to Alzheimer’s
Today we remember you.And will always remember you,Even though we said many goodbyesThese past years.Goodbye to the last time you’ll remember my name,The last time you’ll read me a book,The last time you’ll play a game with me,The last time you’ll join family dinner,The last time I will hear your words,The last time you’ll walk with me,The last time I’ll make you laugh,The last time you’ll hear my voice and respond.And now this last goodbye, As we lay you to rest,Free to be your whole self again.After so many goodbyes.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Annika Ziff Glueck: “I started writing poetry when I was younger, and my grandmother Anne encouraged me to keep going. I love to curl up and read, but for me, writing is hard some days. I love poetry as a way to share my ideas and emotions, and communicate my voice.”
Related* “Elegy for Madrid” by Catherine Ruffing * “The Whole Shebang Up for Debate” by Kari Gunter-Seymour * “Uncle Ivan and the Last Dog Race” by Travis Burke
Image: “Terry’s Keys” by Kim Beckham. “Bigger Than Us” was written by Emily Walker for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
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Emily Walker
BIGGER THAN US
we ran out shriekingleaving our mark as footprints in the sand only stopping toplant our keys on the fence like a flag on the moonterry, her short hair,her red face,said we owned the beachand we could’vebut the black-backed gulls who mimicked our screeches,they were thievesthe dunes were our country the waves, our closest friendsthe sun burnt us in continentsdrawing maps on our backs and painting our hair with streaks of light, of day, of promise.stay forever, we swore andlocked our pinkies till they bled—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2024, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Kim Beckham: “‘We ran out shrieking.’ I really like that the poet created characters and a world to fit the scene. They truly captured all of the senses in the images, sounds, and heat of Terry’s day at the beach. It felt really tight with the perfect image to punctuate the ending. Pinky swear!”
Related* “Color / Off-Color” by Emily Pease * “Oracle” by Robert E. Ray * “A Town of Mirrors and Quaking Forty-Fours” by Richard Manly Heiman
Siddharth Dasgupta
METROPOLIS WITH GHAZAL
Come walk with me through the bones of this bustling city.Time hedges its bets in the spit-spatter of this hustling city.On the streets, fragrance is rampant. Catharsis of us, strainedthrough the finely-woven forgetfulness of this muslin city.A silent movie plays at the Regal. Speak to me of silence,lest I scream mercy in the bare fangs of this cuspid city.You and me at the speed of sound. Leave behind a notefor me in the rich, riotous libraries of this lovesick city.There is a war on TV. The ratings are high. Lay downyour arms for me, in the bravado of this muscling city.Mythology’s all the rage. The disco dance of antiquities.It prospers florid as the footnotes to this tussling city.Jesus speaks to me from a mosque that peals with templebells, deep in the wide-eyed throb of this puzzling city.Siddharth, you should leave prophecy behind. Sing, write,scream, prosper. Tonight, dream up this druglicked city. —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Siddharth Dasgupta: “As an Indian writer, to write the ghazal is to follow in a centuries-long tradition—from the ache of Amir Khusrow, the twin longings of Jan Nisar Akhtar and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and the revered mysticism of Mirza Ghalib, to the more contemporary English explorations of Agha Shahid Ali and Jeet Thayil. This ghazal then is one leaf in a long line of flourishing forests, infused with an ethnic heartbeat and existential ache that keep time to lost cities, bars filled with anonymous jazz, and love that knows no agenda.” (web)
Related* “Ghazal: Freedom in America” by Alicia Ostriker * “Ghazal at the End” by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor * “Ghazal: Back Home” by Zeina Hashem Beck
Dick Westheimer
WHERE DOES A PERSON WITH APHANTASIA DREAM OF GOING?
My son asks me how can I run the same mile-long loops through the woods every day and not be bored and I tell him it’s different—every time. The sun angles through the trees in changing ways. The undersides of the leaves shudder to the breeze much as a lover’s kiss differs from the next and the next. Shadows dapple the path in new ways with each step and I know the route but not the way until I walk it. Sometimes the creek wafts the gaseous smell of heron dung, sometimes it’s the reek of rotting scum, sometimes it’s the faint tasteof the sea. Often I hear the water wash over the rocks like little bells, other times it sluices like a million million motherswhispering shush. There are portals in the heat of summer when a pocket of cool air comes up from the bottoms like a great refrigerator door that I stand before. How could anyone dream this—this moment on this path with my foot suspended right before it falls, this definitive minute closer to my death? And who wouldn’t want to visit this very point in time, this infinitesimal instant when there is no pain, this instant between two others I know I share with you dear reader. Maybe you too saw that single dewdrop cling to the tip of the blade of grass, the lone bee foraging the one white clover that did not succumbto weed killer? I don’t recall your name or facebut I know this about you: If you are reading this,you will hear this click. And I will take this one morebreath. Then this. Then … And you will hear the word “this.”—from Prompt Poem of the Month
June 2024
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Prompt: Write a poem set in a place you’ve always dreamed of going to but never have. Allude to all the basic senses.Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “When one cultivates the practice of writing poetry, the world can reveal itself in ways it never had before. When I first heard Dick read this poem on the Prompt Lines of the Rattlecast, we were taken along for his morning run in such detail that we could almost hear our own footsteps pounding in his woods. And like any good journey, I was surprised by the last turn, in this case towards a bold, fourth-wall-breaking ars poetica. Aren’t we, as poets, always running towards a poem?”
Related* “Sometimes a Poem” by Dick Westheimer * “What the Astrologer Failed to See in Our Stars” by Dick Westheimer * “The Nearly New Moon and the Crescent Earth” by Dick Westheimer
Cindy Guentherman
LADIES BLOUSES $2.99
It was the mid-’60s, a time of rock and roll and hippies, yet men still wore hats to work, and ladies wore dresses and pantyhose. Suits were displayed on neat racks and people looking for new shoes were fitted by a professional at Weise’s Department Store in Rockford, Illinois. After years of babysitting, my first summer job at 16 was to take the bus downtown and ride the elevator up to the store office, where I was preparing a new inventory on a manual typewriter. The subject matter was not exciting and every time there was an inventory addition or change, I had to start that page over. It was kind of like the Groundhog Day movie in real life. But for this I was paid a dollar ten an hour, way better than the 50 cents I got for babysitting. Before the summer was over, I would move on to another place for a few cents an hour more.carbon copyall the mistakesI tried to fix—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Cindy Guentherman: “I’ve been making up poems since age five on the way home from kindergarten. I like all kinds of poetry, but haiku has been my favorite for about 50 years. This haibun was written after a Rattlecast prompt—to write a haibun about our first job. I love prompts because they let me write things I would have never considered before.”
Related* “About Those Apples” by Cindy Putnam Guentherman * “Thaw” by David O’Connell * “Retail” by Michael Diebert
Nina Peláez
PRAYER AFTER ICONOCLASM
after Shahzia Sikander and Esther Strauß
Blessed are the bones, the scaffoldthat holds, seed set in the depthof the mouth, waiting to sproutin the slippery dark. Blessed motherin labor, sweat on the brow. Lookhow they loved, how they hated her.Blessed the navel, blessed the vineuncoiling toward freedom, blessingher crime. Her horns and her halo.Wings held on her back, blessed bethe jabot worn on her neck. Blessbe her grit, bless be her glitter,bless be the downfall of menwho have hurt her. Bless her roughhands, lungs out of breath, bless hermilk seeping from each of her breasts.—from Poets Respond
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Nina Peláez: “This poem was written after reading two articles from the past week reporting on the destruction of two sculptures: Esther Strauß’ “Crowning,” depicting Mary in the throes of childbirth, and Shahzia Sikander’s ‘Witness,’ an allegorical female figure. Within a week, both sculptures were beheaded. I was disturbed to read about the brutal vandilism of these two images, both of which engage with biblical subjects in ways that seek to reframe traditional narratives about female empowerment, particularly around reproductive justice. This poem offers a benediction to the two violated figures.” (web)
Related* “Teacher’s Prayer” by R.A. Villanueva * “Prayer on National Childfree Day” by Abby E. Murray * “The Blessing” by Jeff Whitney
Elliott Egan (age 8)
FALSE SPRING
On one of February’s false springs,I hike to the creek near my house,Searching for mica, pottery, and shells.Over my head a kingfisher zings, His song is whooping and wild.I’m a prospector, panning for gold.I crouch, move pebbles in the stream.I stuff my treasures in the pocketOf my jacket—it’s lapis lazuli blue.I see mica by its gleam.I slip over the muddy bank,I see signs of a beaver, both new and old.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Elliott Egan: “I like to tell stories about the world around me, and I like how poetry flows together. Stories are so hard to write down when they are long, but in poetry I can get all of my ideas down on paper. I also really enjoy making magnetic poetry and haiku poetry, because counting the syllables and making things fit together is like a game.”
Related* “How to Drown Kittens in 1958” by Meaghan Elliott * “False Vibrato” by Angelique Jean Lindberg * “Breadfather” by Brendan Egan
Roberto Christiano
DISHES
“You can do what you want. Write a ghazal or do the dishes.” I’m in Zoom, a poetry class, and I know, there really are dishes in my sink accumulating guilt and luring the reckless red ants, but I am thinking of Uvalde, of all the kitchens with one less dish to wash tonight. I am thinking of my great niece and nephew, aged nine and ten, who toss each other the warm dry dishes straight out of the dishwasher. I am thinking of those bright dishes, bought from across the border, on the governor’s dark pine table, each one a swirl of blue and red. I am thinking hard about all the thoughts and prayers, and every my heart goes out, and every platitude dished out. I am thinking of a shy little girl in her white communion dress. On the table behind her, Mother has set a mass of churros in a dish. I am thinking of the antique, porcelain, Bavarian dishes my mother gave me. Nobody cares about them anymore. Roberto, you can put away the dishes.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Roberto Christiano: “The ghazal, like the villanelle and the pantoum, has its roots in song. This appeals to my musical past. My father and brother were both musicians—Father played Portuguese and Italian folk music on the accordion and my brother was a rock guitarist. I played the piano and was a church pianist for a while. The repeating end words of the ghazal couplets remind me of the rounds of my childhood, the songs I sang in school, the quick refrains, the catchy and playful rhymes.” (web)
Related* “Picnic” by Suzanne Lummis & Ron Koertge * “Ghazal for New Moon” by Sophia Liu * “Brett Kavanaugh Does the Dishes” by Katharine Harer
Bob Hicok
A FAMILY MATTER
Of course, when my mother askedthat I give my wife a kiss for her, I did so,telling my wife, I am my mother, kissing you.My wife’s mother, it turns out, had asked the same,so of course she told me, I am my mother,kissing you back. When we informed our mothers laterthat they had kissed as lesbiansthrough heterosexual proxybeside our cat’s sense that somethinglike a mouse or with the potentialto be a mouse would eventually movethrough the spot she was staring at,where nothing was or had ever been, as faras the record shows, my mother asked, was tongueinvolved? My wife and I consulted the logbut there was no entry. We shruggedat our mothers and went about our lives,though now with an awarenessthere are gaps we’ll never fillthat may or may not have tongues in them,though given a vote, I say yes, tongues, redlike our mouths are where flames goto be alone.—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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Bob Hicok: “I think of myself as a failed writer. There are periods of time when I’ll be happy with a given poem or a group of poems, but I, for the most part, detest my poems. I like writing. I love writing, and I believe in myself while I am writing; I feel limitless while I’m writing.” (web)
Related* “Going Big” by Bob Hicok * “Lovely Day” by Bob Hicok * “This Again” by Bob Hicok
Isabella DeSendi
EVE’S PROTEST
Men insist I shouldn’t use my body to conquerthem when men have been using meto look at loneliness less directly. I solvetheir endless wars; I’m a rack to hangheadless hats. Is it lunacy or resiliencewhen something breaks but we keep on pushing through it? Like the body, becoming sacred is an act of love or self-deceit. Just look at Adam wrenching out his rib for me. Things haven’t changed. Lonely people are still desperate and busybeing loud about it. I would know. I’m shapeless as a fledgling flattened having surrendered all my bones. Look, all I wanted was someone I could show my wretchedness to, someone who would be there, loving. Or else, I wantedto feel winter coming and not feel like an animal who’d forgotten to wake up. Do I really have to say it? Even the sequoia tree’s leaves will redden to ash, proving nature and God are good at showing us all the ways we’re wrong. Tell me, what woman hasn’t been tempted, porous—only wantingwhat she wanted. Do you blame me, Lord?I’m only doing what you’ve done. Made a mansuffer then surrender before I let him love me.If I was wrong to die for pleasure, so be it. If I was wrong to make my man aware of his body the way wind is aware of its shapelessnessonly after a locomotive blows through a tunnel and cleaves its loud nothing into morebillowing nothing, then I accept what damage, brightness I’ve caused. I know I’ve said this already but I mean it: Once, I was good. Now, standing by the pier, the sky opens upin late-night light like a scab unwilling to close and I admit, part of me is still like you, Lord. Some days, I’m tired. Some days, all I want is to eradicate the earth. Instead, a man I love enters me slow as light stabbing its way through to morning. O God, don’t refute this. I know your rageis fueled by jealousy and your jealousy fueled by sadness. You wish you could hold a body like this and understand what I mean when I sayit was worth it. All of it. Yes, it was worth it. —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Isabella DeSendi: “This poem was inspired by, of course, the first woman in biblical history to defy God’s law in favor of sex, companionship, desire. I wrote this piece during a time when I felt deeply frustrated with religion and its constructs around womanhood and purity; I was tired with all the people and forces that were imposing their rules on me. Although this is a persona poem, Eve’s story is one many women can relate to. I hope this poem offers a new perspective from Eve and showcases a voice that is defiant, autonomous, but tender—and yet, still finds (and chooses) love.”(web)
Related* “Elegy for Tío Lazaro” by Isabella DeSendi * “The Bellbird” by Isabella Slattery-Shannon * “Letter to the Ministry of Loneliness” by Judy Kronenfeld
Willie James King
I DREAMED OF HENDRIX
The white ones unwarranted,hardly a one cared much fora colored lad with long locks,greedy for the guitar andassorted girls, especiallyduring that goddamn War.But I was born to rulethe blues, to do with itwhatever I chose. And Iwould take that guitarand I’d choke that son-of-a-bitch. I even mademusic with my mouth, bytaking those tiny stringsinto my teeth, making themsing like a sparrow onits first outing into early-April sun. And the peopledidn’t know what to makeof me, a prodigious man, no,a wild, black, prodigiousman controlling the bandstand. And I could notcross the crowds that swarmedlike flies to the concerts, orwherever I was performingonly to see me, witnessthe magic of my every opus,even in England, whenI was an ex-patriot. Iwas angry as every averageperson was at America’spolitics. I was ready fora revolution long overdue.I was propelled by theplight of my people, called‘colored’ then, but emerging.I, well, put me in the placelike the parapet ready tosee the bottom rail riseto the top as the Biblicalpassage spoke of an oppressedpeople. We were the onlyones, see, all of the Indianswiped out, or, having lostthe distinction of individu-ality. I needed that dumbneedle, and the coke in orderto cope with fame, and withfailure, too. It became asperfunctory to me as an at-omizer is to any womanwith night needs, havingto look to more than oneman to earn her quotain money. I made music.And, the music made me.America wasn’t only fas-cinated with that fat, leanthing making an odd seamdown the length of my jeans,it was also fascinated bythe slow, heavy weight ofa dark man dying bythe help of what it makesavailable to that sinkingman’s hand, sometimesin the notion of his needs,this, as medicine, knowingall the time it is dealingdeath to him, in disguisebut my fame continues torise, all of those unusualbeats I brought, strangechords, and other thingswhich made my music amusing.But no marvelous man hasever been alive to witness him-self being made into a martyr,neither me, Malcolm, norMartin. And even deadsometimes, I find my form-less mind befuddled by suchambivalence, of how theycan kill a man in Americaand canonize him after the kill.—from Rattle #9, Summer 1998
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Willie James King: “I write only compelled to do so. Writing is hard, that is why I love it. Language is as difficult to control as any animal found in the deep, wild woods. They don’t conform. They hold to what they do best, no matter how we holler: Humanity! Humanity! And that is why I write; I might be able to speak not only for myself, but for those without a voice; or, who they think they are, etc.”
Related* “The Existential Self” by Willie James King * “Self-Autopsy of a Crazed Man” by Willie James King * “Speculative” by Willie James King
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
GHAZAL AT THE END
It’s a hint toward conclusion: All will be okay today.The newsman assured “at the end of the day.”Eastern, Greenwich Mean, Lord Howe, AoE “Anywhere on Earth”—all depends on the day.Stopped at a red light, the car behind me didn’t stopfor mine—not how I wanted to spend the day.Talking hens and bear friends, bedtime storieswe read again and again. “The End” for the day.Confusing to language learners, this English fillermeans “to sum up.” “Just a cliché,” we lesson the day.Sumerians, the first to write, keep time, farm, brew,built six miles of wall to defend their day.Season of take-out, stay-in, mask-on, video-off, an effort to get ourselves dressed even on a Wednesday.At the den of decay, the zen of dismay, there’s a chicken buffetfor the men of Bombay. Nonsense, Melisa, is the trend of the day.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor: “I am tethered to podcasts and news these days and I keep hearing ‘at the end of the day’ as a way to sum everything that’s been said up, as if there could be any end to the nonsense and terror. I took this idiomatic expression and used the ghazal form to twist and turn it. How does the day end, where, and for whom? As a professor of TESOL and world language education, the ghazal helped me explore the meaning that’s lost by cliché, as well as what might be newly found.” (web)
Related* “June Is Almost Done” by Nianxi Chen * “Ghazal 5: of the Dead Boy” by Federico García Lorca * “Ghazal—” by S. A.
Leila Jackson
THERE WAS NO FIRE
this time or the next, no rules to ignore,no chamber to load with one round and sendspinning, no knife pointing forward, no sirensto duck, no people to swing at the head,no eyes to make any more black than they’dalready been, there were no explosions at all,no exit wounds to patch up the messiness for,no lashes or hands that severed other hands.Make no mistake, it was me. I ate the wholething. I splintered the wood. I grew teethto chew glass. I cleaned people’s clocks’til they shone. My siblings said how’s it taste and I called it a banquet and ate the dining table.There was a kick from the belly, a learningto run, an inhale of rain, a feast and the blindnessit made—but once I put it out, there was no fire.In our defense, we were starving.—from Poets Respond
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Leila Jackson: “For a few years now, I’ve been tracking major storms, and I was watching Beryl this week. I have family from the South and close friends from the Caribbean, so I’ve heard many firsthand stories about the devastation that Andrew, Katrina, Maria, etc. wrought on peoples’ homes and livelihoods. I wanted to personify a hurricane here because, unlike much of the other news we see, it’s completely out of human control (outside of the steps we can take to mitigate climate change).”
Related* “The Words Come, They Choke Me” by Leila Chatti * “While Reading the News About Orlando, I Hear the Call to Prayer” by Leila Chatti * “Morning” by Leila Chatti
Iris Cai (age 15)
GHAZAL FOR GRANDMOTHER
My grandmother kept a suitcase, hard & roundedlike a deep pink shell. I used to finger its roundededges & compare them to her deft, valleyed hands.Wind-chapped skin crinkled like crow’s feet, roundedaround eyes where her smile never reached. She grewin the dried-out fields by the Yangtze, grains of roundedrice panicles shriveled into shadows under her eyes &trellised ribs. Three years, skin stretched over roundedbone. My grandmother’s mother escaped the countryduring the war. Her daughter, still a toddler, roundedcheeks rubbed with dirt. Tucked in a bush, hiddenfrom soldiers. She learned to keep fear roundedbehind corners, choked into the packed-earth wallsof a household not her own. No one rubbed roundedcircles on her back once she woke from nightmares.But when hurt is spread thin, sharp edges roundedaway by time, does memory fade? She has begunto forget & cannot find words to describe roundededges slipping out of reach: the sunlit cream of herliving room walls & smiling family hung in roundedwooden frames. America blurs into an ocean of ink,tiding characters she can no longer write. Roundedabove these murky waves, all that she never knewwas family & forgiveness. The days have roundedinto full circles. My first memory is her, yet one dayshe will forget the rounded syllables of my name.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Iris Cai: “I like to write poetry because I’m in love with words, people, books, and things. I love English, which is not even my first language. Even now, I’m unacquainted with the feeling of these words on my tongue, but when I am writing poetry, I can create a syntax that is entirely my own. It’s a kind of empowerment: I can put a name to all the complex, confusing feelings I otherwise could never express. What comes out is small and pulsing and jagged with line breaks, but it is an ode to all the people who have made me, all the books that have sustained me, all the words I know and will never know. For me, poetry is the next closest thing to love.”
Related* “To Be Read in the American Mood” by Michael Martella * “Heirloom” by A.M. Juster * “My Great-Grandmother Carved Her Name On This Door” by Nardine Taleb
Anna Lucia Deloia
WE ARE MOVED
I spend a lot of time in that part of the internetwhere small beings are given the immoderate carethat all small beings deservewhere a fallen fledgling bird is hand-fed from a pipette anda garter snake tangled in a bit of tapeis tenderly sponged until the adhesive dissolveswhere a newborn is loved exuberantly not only by theirgrown-ups but by a comically large St. Bernardwhose nose barely fits between the bars of the criband who would clearly defend that baby with its life.In these videos, the music is very sentimentaland the accompanying text is the kind of thingyou might be emailed by a grandmother whois charmed by happy endings (if you arelucky enough to have such a grandmother)so if you’re not into that, feel free to roll your eyesbut also keep reading becauseI have a defense prepared.But first let me tell you about a clip in which a baby river otteris reunited with its family, which is clearly a gangyou wouldn’t want to mess witha thing designed to protect its own, to throw fierce looksand punches if necessary and if I had been the onefilming I would have been scared shitlessbecause the otters ran to that fuzzy lump like it was the only thing that could sustain them(which yes, biologically speaking is the purpose of offspringbut I mean something more singular)they scooped it up and held it so close it was absorbedinto the blur of their bodies tumblingover the beach—which is to saythese videos feel like serious businessand also like testaments to tremendous joybecause think of the way parakeets shimmy with their whole bodiesor for that matter, how happy dogs wag their butts as well as their tailsor for that matter, how happy ducks also wag their tails (and don’t get enough credit for it)or for that matter, how babies danceand how grown-ups dance when they are near babies.Surely, there is something essential happening here.I’m sorry, I had intended to make a more coherent argumentbefore remembering how we are drawn to one anotherknocked me off my feet. Let me try again:I spend a lot of time in that part of the internetwhere small beings are shielded from further sufferingwhere previously neglected dogs are given new homes with foster families who can’t helpbut adopt them in the endwhere orphaned baby orangutans are wrapped in the arms ofgrieving mommy orangutans, who both neededsomeone either bigger or smaller than themselvesto hold. And this is in so many ways not what our world isor could be—especially because this content is craftedto be consumable, which means commodifiableand sometimes falls into the two-faced trap of selling us traumain order to sell us redemption (if not toxic positivity)—or this is the analysis I would makein order to sound more self-awarein order to remind you that I am a well-educated adult who readsin a variety of genres. Exceptwhat I am doing here is inviting you into a more private space (which is also an actual file ofbookmarked videos on my computer) where, while watching horses try to stand for the first time,I feel not like a savvy cultural critic but likea wet, wobbly foal.Please don’t tell meif you like me less for that.But do feel free to tell me if you don’t like these videosand I will say: you do you, friend!because I realize that I keep trying to use wordsto conjure the feeling of being speechlessand even more: the feeling that words are insufficientwhich is a ridiculous goal (not to mentionincompatible with my anxious stream-of-consciousness communication style).But I will also say: I still need youto see how easily I am derailed by my emotions. I still need youto know that I have thought a great deal about the profound and come to the conclusion that it isoften what happens when we allow ourselvesto be affected by the banaland unremarkable.I still need youto come along to the place where the pit bull is scared and hiding under the carbecause it has been hurt beforeand then to the place where the same pit bull gets belly rubs whenever it wants them.We already know how near these places are to one anotherand all their variations: that anguish is an acknowledgmentof how much is worth mourning, thatgratitude is the anticipation of lossand needing someone—well, good luckfeeling existentially stable.But in a three-minute video the smallness of that distance is soevident. We can feel ourselves moving across it and maybe that is allwe mean when we saywe are moved.Anyway, whether or not you join mein my corner of the internet, I am glad to have the thingsthat make me think of those I loveso easily accessible.If you get a moment, forward oneto your grandmotherfor me.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Anna Lucia Deloia: “Most of the best things I know, I learned from elementary schoolers: for example, that enthusiasm is a superpower and that we can approach even the biggest ideas with playfulness. I try to live up to those lessons in my poems. When I’m not writing, I make things for/with kids and families—especially things to help us all take better care of each other.” (web)
Related* “Feeling Compassion For Others” by Anna M. Evans * Two Poems by Lucia Baca * “The Adjunct’s Villanelle” by Anna M. Evans
Traci Brimhall
AT A PARTY ON ELLIS ISLAND WATCHING FIREWORKS
The man next to me sings God Bless America even thoughhe knows the Statue of Liberty is unsafe to enter. He singsmy home, sweet home, and I bless fireworks breakingover our heads. Bless three islands held apartby tunneled water. Bless bridges, lights hooking shore to shore.Bless the ocean that drowns its dreamers. Immigrantswho dreamed of cupboards, with shelves, with jars fullof raspberries. Who dreamed of unhaunted rooms. Who dreamedtheir daughters tall and strong. Bless doctors who putstethoscopes to tired Atlantic hearts. Forgive their initialsof defects: Pg, Pregnancy; S, Senility. Bless those who waited,who sang to their dozing children in a dozen languages.Bless satchels filled with photographs and christening gowns.Bless their minds heavy with hymns, with recipesfor borscht. Forgive Italians detained, Japanese interred,German-Americans accused of Nazi sympathies, and blessthe language of explosion. Bless sparks that die in the river.Bless stars that fall like hailstones on the spangled city. Blessthe sun-washed Mother of Exiles who welcomed salt-stung masses.Forgive us for not restoring Liberty. Forgive us for ornamentsin the gift shop. Forgive us this music. Forgive us our dancing.Forgive us for reading names of the dead, and for forgetting them.—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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Traci Brimhall: “I was born in Little Falls, New Mexico, although all I remember is the library, playground and Dairy Queen. Now I live in New York City where there are still plenty of books, parks and ice cream. As a child, my grandmother recited Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ every time I stayed with her. I don’t know if I knew I wanted to write poetry then, but I did learn that marriage is an arduous journey filled with talking animals.”
Related* “What We Heard About the Americans” by Rachel Rose * “How to Pray” by Annelyse Gelman * “The Whole Shebang Up for Debate” by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Rohan Buettel
THIS TOO SHALL PASS
The flame that burns so bright, this too shall passHowever strong the light, this too shall passYou heap the wood upon the open fireAnd set the world alight, this too shall passYou work so hard, achieve so many dreamsA rocket soars in flight, this too shall passThe spells you cast bewitch my ears, my eyesYour beauty blinds my sight, this too shall passYou overlook my faults, you bring me loveHow much does love excite? this too shall passYou keep me safe from every growing fearWhen terror fills the night, this too shall passYou sow the grapes to make the finest winesThe vines will suffer blight, this too shall passYour ventures will all fail, the world is cruelWhen nothing helps your plight, this too shall passA nasty streak to kick you when you’re downEndure the wounds of spite, this too shall passWhen love is lost your grief so raw insideYou hold the pain so tight, this too shall passThe poet thinks his lines encompass lifeAnd ever will delight, this too shall pass—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Rohan Buettel: “I like writing ghazals, like sonnets, because they have strict formal requirements. There is a pleasure in meeting the challenge of writing a formal poem complying with the requirements. Then there is the pleasure of writing more contemporary poems dispensing with some of those elements (such as rhyme). As there is no metrical requirement, there is also the pleasure of experimenting with different meters or free verse. I see the ghazal as the equivalent of the sonnet form developed in the Middle East. Some ghazals in English work very well when they incorporate sonnet-like aspects, such as a strict iambic pentameter. I have always felt uncomfortable using my own name in the last stanza, so use a more self-effacing reference.”
Related* “Job” by Pat Pittman * “The Second Pass” by Taylor Mali * “Fate’s Pass” by Barry Ballard
Jen DeGregorio
AN ARGUMENT AGAINST CYNICISM
What surprises me more than a newmillipede species was discovered this weekin Los Angeles County is that anyone caresenough about millipedes to look for them. Entomologistsmay be the last true heroes. They may bea species unto themselves, one they have overlookedin their zeal to turn from the mirrortoward the dirt. The Illacme socalhas four hundred eighty-six legs, a toothy head,the L.A. Times says, and the greenish translucenceof a glow-in-the-dark toy. It weaves through the soilas elegantly as an embroiderer’s needle. The reportermust have labored over these phrases, felt enoughjoy in prose to fuel her a few more daysin her reviled profession. A survey this year said halfof Americans think all journalists are liars. To them I offerCorinne Purtill, who surely spent hours listeningto entomologists so she could tell us something approachingthe true nature of millipedes—not insectsbut arthropods, more like lobsters than beetles,vile-tasting to birds, garbagemenof the forest, eaters of dead leaves they transforminto food for what grows—and of entomologiststhemselves. How one named Paul Marek droveon Christmas to Whiting Ranch to find specimenswhich he gently scooped into plastic vialswith a bit of soil, then tucked into his carry-onfor the trip back to his lab. Attentionis the highest form of love. And I love entomologistsfor the attention they pay to the smallest among us, and journalistsfor the attention they pay to the ones who pay attentionto the spectrum of beauty and terror, our discoveriesand petty political battles and vicious crimes and actsof unearned mercy and weddings and burialsin the somehow still teeming earth.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Jen DeGregorio: “I woke up one morning last July and sat down hoping to write a poem. I had just gotten back into a regular poetry-writing practice after a long hiatus and was fearful that my creative well had gone dry. While pre-poem internet surfing, I somehow happened upon the news about the millipede discovery, and this poem poured out of me in about an hour (though I’ve been studying and writing poetry seriously for twenty years, so I’m no savant). The care with which the journalist had written about this millipede species and the entomologists studying it struck me as so touching; I felt overwhelmed by feeling for the journalist and the entomologists, doing what I’ll call God’s work (though I’m not sure what I mean by God). So much is heartbreaking in our world, but reading this story lifted my spirit: The Earth is still full of mystery, and there are good, curious people out there who wish to help us unravel it. Journalists—often maligned—are heroes to me. Entomologists are heroes. Anyone who is committed to nurturing this world—including through study, through the sharing of knowledge—is a hero. But such heroes, these quieter ones, often go unsung. Let poetry sing their praise.” (web)
Related* “Dispatch from an Inland University” by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn * “One Big, Empty Room” by Jen Lambert * “I Was Looking for a Job and All I Got Was a New Haircut” by Jen Gayda Gupta
Alison Luterman
MOCKINGBIRDS
My friend says she wants to shootthe mockingbirds who infest the big tree outside her window and sing all night. The violence of their squawks is not the sameas the violence of our thoughtsabout them at 2 a.m. or the gunshotsand illegal fireworks punctuating this warm eveningas we sit in front of our television watching two old men,one blustering, one falteringat the lip of the abyss, and an invisible pool of despair spreads like blood out from the screensand into our living rooms and pools around our feetand we lift our feet up but go on watching as it engulfs us on our sofas, forks poisedhalfway to our mouths, frozen there, watching.And just as the violence of the what the actual fuckwe’ve had some of the smartest women on the planet in contention for this job, but no, it’s gotta betwo men who cannot seem to form one coherent sentence between themspraying from my mouth like machine gun fire is not the same as the killer in the supermarketspewing real bullets that ricochet off carts,or the maniac at the music festival with his bump stock,or the white supremacist at the Black church,or the anti-Semite at the synagogue, still, I confess,there is murder in my heart, there is so much rageboiling inside my own body, inside the bodyof everyone I know—we are all simmering this summerwith a thin metallic taste in our mouthsas if we’d been given old-fashioned shock treatmentswhich we have, and are now sitting inside the absolute blankness of the aftermathwith our unanswerable questionswho are we and how did we get here,and what the hell happens now?—from Poets Respond
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Alison Luterman: “I find myself unable to watch either of the two candidates currently vying for the office of the President of the United States of America. I will vote for the Democrat, of course. But I am still not over my disappointment that Elizabeth Warren was bumped out of the 2020 race, or the other qualified women who could be leading our country brilliantly right now were it not for patriarchy.” (web)
Related* “Fog” by Alison Luterman * “Gold Hat” by Alison Luterman * “The Insurrectionists Were Right” by Alison Luterman
Claire Beeli (age 15)
ABECEDARIAN FOR THE HORSES IN A TRAILER ON ROUTE 66
above the hood of thisbeetle of a car, the skycarries itself lightly. hugely. blue. idon’t know where we’re going. i don’t think you do,either, with your fineears like the ends of mustaches and youreyes, round and dark and as slow tofall as the night. i don’t know where we’regoing but i don’t think it’s there. we can’tgrieve yet because we don’t know what for. because we don’t knowhow it even began;how to even begin. the desert here could be enough,i think, for us. if we couldjust tilt the wheel a bit too far right, toknife through the barrierslike the rain, when it comes. i can’t stay here.my legs ache from disuse and i keepnudging the early sky but it won’t wake. there,over the ridge somewhere, could be a herd, aplace for us to go. for the taste of air beyond thisquiet, far from this soft rush ofrubber on the morning. you couldstart with your hooves in the sands andthe sun on your coat, lightunfiltered by the windows of this darkvan. i could start without sunscreen, withwaves of heat that hold me like a womb.we can start here, if you want. there is no numbered-letteredexit. there is no too late, no number ofyears. there is only now, and the wheel, and theyell that is pounding hooves, and the hotzenith of living, so free it hurts.—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Claire Beeli: “I write poetry as a sort of record, and as a medium for working out complex ideas. Each image, clever phrase, and stanza becomes a permanent record of a thought, an emotion I’ve observed, or an experience I’ve had, rendering them immortal. I’d like to think that I’ll be able to look back in 10, 20, or even 50 years to what I’ve written as a teenager and recognize each poem as a time capsule. I use writing to tease out the connections between varied, nuanced concepts, too—to form unlikely pairings of images and ideas or work out the kinks in a kind of philosophical argument. To me, it’s the most useful art form there is.”
Related* “Birds Aren’t Real Abecedarian” by Devon Balwit * “Abecedarian for Alabama Libraries” by Pamela Manasco * “F Is for Fear” by Heidi Seaborn
Maaz Bin Bilal
AT THE END
How can one ever begin at the end?—Death is regeneration at the endWaiz lives piety, prays five times a dayHe knows not the joys of sin at the endHow do I sin—I am no CatholicI will have no confession at the endI am Muslim but don’t bow at the mosqueWill He give me salvation at the end?Try but you cannot kill me, I’m HinduI have reincarnation at the endPlease bury me next to the synagogueI too faced crucifixion at the endThe Pharaohs built palatial pyramidsThey’d go in style they’d reckon at the endDon’t burn, don’t bury, sink me in the seaMaaz, no commemoration at the end
Notes: Waiz, in Urdu from Arabic, means preacher, homilist, adviser, admonisher, exhorter. Maazis my takhallus (penname), from Arabic, and means asylum, refuge.
—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Maaz Bin Bilal (from the conversation): “Poetry exists even in our cinema, for example, as most of our films, especially until recently, used to be musicals, so all the film songwriters are often poets from Urdu, which is my mother tongue. Urdu ghazals, which are derived from Persian ghazals, and which in turn are derived from Arabic ghazals, are sung often and set to music. As I was growing up in my own house, my father would often play the ghazal genre of music on the record or cassette player. So Urdu poetry, and film songs also, which are derived from particularly Urdu poetry and ghazals, were all around me. … [W]hile growing up, the ghazal was the kind of poetry that I was most in tune with. I soaked in the rhythms, the rhymes, the ideas.”
Related* “He Shuns Me” by Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy * “Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)” by Alejandro Escudé * “1916” by Daniel Green
Image: “Bird Ascending the Fire” by Barbara Hageman Sarvis. “An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You” was written by Steven Pan for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
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Steven Pan
AN EARLY AUTUMN LIGHT THAT UNBURIES YOU
On earth, everything no longer here is here in some variation of light. An ice agehalf-gone, all geography shaved off youngest to oldest: craters and lakes telling time in reverse. Someday we’ll end up there, you used to say, pointing to the sun setting over the strand. The season and the leaves, starting over again in a dream with everything that lived before this. Is it strange, how a hurt that looked backat you, looks like all of you in the amber slowness before evening. The detour of your shadow somewhere, casting a hook over the water, perception as imprecise as memoryor the autumn lingering inside of it. Any year straying no further than the line of a robin’s wings, the slight lean of the trees that said lifeheld on. If I could call you back, would this shore be the one you’d wait on? How often I mistake the sound of the wind for the sound of your answer. Your answer for a goodbye said aloud. Goodbye for a matter of time, or maybe a matter of timing. Like a bird caught mid-flight in the light of the sky, brimming with everything and nothing at once.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There are many aspects of ‘An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You’ that left an impression, from its smooth flow and musicality to its depth of meaning, but what stands out most, perhaps, is the way it’s peppered with gorgeous and brilliant turns of phrase–so many the effect could be overwhelming in the hands of a less adept poet. In the very same sentence, we find ‘The detour / of your shadow,’ ‘perception / as imprecise as memory’ (a stunningly insightful description), and ‘the autumn lingering / inside of it.’ One could read these lines many times and still be taken by the beauty and profundity of the poet’s language. When I first saw this image, I thought such a dramatic and striking piece of art would be challenging to match. I can’t imagine a better partner than this poem.”
Related* “Wildfire Dreams” by Linda Vandlac Smith * “Joy” by Melissa Madenski * “Four Loaves of Stone, Ascending” by Joel Vega
M.P. Carver
THE STATE OF IT
The train cuts across the marsh. The fence cuts across the forest.The bridgecuts acrossthe river.Our stone, steel, and electric bones grow and grow. Industriously, we rib the planet.The rib cage protects the chest. The chest traps the heart. Our hearts beat and beat.We knowthat somedaythey won’t, stillwe can’t help but think that this, too, is something we can cut across.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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M.P. Carver: “I write because I’ve never found anything that sidles up closer to the ineffable than poetry. A beautiful failure.” (web)
Related* “Against the Solar Eclipse” by Alejandro Escudé * “Farm Sonnet” by Kitty Carpenter * “Walls Trembling Like Horses” by Dmitry Blizniuk
Karen Braucher
CURVES
That was the summer I fell asleep in German and woke up in French. I lay down on the earth, stared up through a three-dimensional labyrinth of dark branches stretching toward sky. Curves are so much more caressing than straight lines, n’est-ce pas? Who has time to look at parabolas? Could I express only a parade of diversionary questions? Nein, nein, the German inside demanded, Gib mir Antworten! I went to a party and tried only to ask questions and answer none. I was a spy, intimidating to at least two persons. Questions are curves, without closure. Could one spend a whole evening on a stroll through someone else’s mind? How refreshing to encounter unfamiliar corridors. No one is throwing up skeet and asking me to shoot. The parade massed and snapped to attention, goose-stepped away. Replaced by tendrils, drifting pine needles. When I awoke, I was la belle étrangère, omnipotent in my voluptuouslistening. I could coax even the waves to speak.
Notes:
Gib mir Antworten! means “Give me answers!”
la belle étrangère means “the beautiful stranger.”
—from Rattle #23, Spring 2005
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Karen Braucher: “Robert Frost once said that a poem should surprise the poet writing it. On Sept. 11th, 2001, I founded a poets’ collaborative that meets not to critique but to create new poems. We have tried smells, music, videos, writing exercises, you name it. Some surprising poems (including ‘Curves’) have come out of the collaborative and we’ll never forget our anniversary.” (web)
Related* “Autumn” by Bill Rector * “The Happy Meditator” by Katherine Huang * “The Sacrifice” by Michelle Bitting
Stephen Allen
GHAZAL (FIRE)
When the beloved is present, presence lights a burning fire.When the beloved is absent, memory sparks a yearning fire.Swirls of summer dresses. Delicate beauty catches the eye.Be more cautious of her scorn than Cupid returning fire.Lust is easier to manage than purified love, sometimes.Saint Francis flung his tempted body into a churning fire.An education in nature starts with the basic elements:learning earth and air, learning water, learning fire.A tattered manuscript covered in something not quite leather.Scattered fragments of an archaic treatise concerning fire.Driving home at midnight, staggered lights on the northern horizon:a rare Aurora Borealis, a wall of upturning fire.Between this world and all it holds and the floating world of illusionlie nothing more than shadows cast by the mind’s discerning fire. Whose vision of heaven do you want? What geometries?The saints and angels circle, their paths an arc of turning fire.And whose Hell is this? A space of silent loneliness.Boredom much worse torture than tradition’s interning fire.Face it, Stephen, the only fire in the belly you have is heartburn.You should fall in love some time. Embrace the affirming fire.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Stephen Allen: “Experimenting with forms is always fun for me, a chance to bring some order into my life. Writing ghazals, in particular, has been very satisfying: the jumps between couplets mirror the way my mind works, and the traditional subject matter of lost love is one I find very sympathetic at this point in my life.”
Related* “Ghazal: Back Home” by Zeina Hashem Beck * “Ghazal: Freedom in America” by Alicia Ostriker * “Ghazal 5: of the Dead Boy” by Federico García Lorca
Talley Kayser
ADVICE TO A MONOLITH
To mirror the desert, you must wear away.I learned this on a long walk, long ago.My skin went dark past bronze. My hair grew dust. Sun washed my clothes into rock-colored gauze.When only the wet of my eyes and mouthcould reveal me—suddenly bighornbimbled cliffs. Suddenly lionseased among the creosote. I learnedto be gentler when shaking scorpions from my boots. To mirror this desertyou need an edge you trustto crumble, need to feeleach blooded life surviving desertas your kindred. Desert will pit youagainst winds you cannot withstandby standing. Desert will topple all your lightwith greater light. Desert will swallow whole your pilgrims. Look how alienyou are—I say your glareis no protection and less art. I saydesert (fiercer art)will not abide reflection.—from Poets Respond
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Talley Kayser: “The mysterious metal monoliths appearing in remote locations around the world—including, this past week, in my home desert—are easy to read as wry, sci-fi inflected jokes. This is especially true of the current monolith (illegally) installed near Gass Peak, Nevada. Its hyper-shiny surface reflects the desert at odd angles; the color palette matches, but the lines don’t. It looks, at a strangely visceral level, like a glitch. I’m always disappointed by how common it is for artists in this region to use highly reflective surfaces (think Airstream trailer) as sculptural material. I imagine the impulse is grounded in an appreciative tension: the reflection echoes the vastness of the desert landscape, while the smooth texture provides a sharp contrast to the desert’s natural materials. But as someone who has spent a great deal of time walking the Mojave desert, I chafe at how this strategy flirts with cultural narratives that write desert as only space: as empty, as wasteland, even as ‘unearthly.’ It seems that art about the Mojave rarely engages with its aliveness and intimacy—with how the extreme conditions here shape every living thing, including the rocks, into specialized beings worthy of attention and awe. In Nevada, the story of desert-as-empty has real impacts; it’s why Nevada was repeatedly bombed with nuclear weapons, why Nevada only narrowly staved off becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump, and why large-scale lithium mining is being greenlighted in Nevada despite strong objections about its environmental consequences. I know the desert-as-empty story will also empower interested parties to seek out this new monolith with relatively literal regard for the desert itself; a similar installation in Utah attracted would-be admirers in hordes, most of whom had no problem driving their vehicles through protected areas and leaving their (literal) shit wherever they liked on their quest to find the Big Shiny Thing. Into this cluster of associations, I wrote ‘Advice to a Monolith.’ It’s a poem about minding your manners in a place with every capacity to eat you alive. I wonder, if it were left to stand, how long the surface of this monolith would stay mirror-bright. On its own time, I know the desert always wins.” (web)
Related* “The Years We Lived in the Desert” by Megan Merchant * “Free-Form Bolero” by Mather Schneider * “Sestina for the Falling Autumn Light” by Marc Alan Di Martino
Helen Buckingham
THREE HAIKU
returning home a builder’s crane gives me the finger high art one kid draws a gun winking in the midday sun— a whale of a yacht —from Rattle #47, Spring 2015
Tribute to Japanese Forms
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Helen Buckingham: “The reading and writing of Japanese style short-form poetry is my grounding mechanism, be that ground high or low, urban or rural, external or internal. The poems included here were written while living in Bristol and in the past six months since moving to Wells, in the heart of the Somerset countryside, though in many instances their gestation can be traced to my South London childhood. I only wish I’d had access to haiku and its associated forms back then.”
Related* “Three Haiku and a Tanka” by George Swede * “Three Haiku” by Jee Leong Koh * “True Colours” by Michael Dylan Welch
Jana Bouma
THE THINGS WE FORGET
My dentist warns that my gums are letting go; they’rethreatening to set my teeth adrift on a current of words.So I’ve bought myself an electric toothbrush, and my teeth, now, after brushing them are so clean that they are a wonder, and every day I trace them with my tongue, relishing their smoothness. And when I spit into the sink and turn on the faucet, all that roughness goes spiraling down the drain, through the pipes, into that long, tentacled river flowing continuously beneath our feet, carrying away all that we do not want to think about or see again, uniting stream with stream of effluent from my kitchen, my bathroom, the neighbor’s kitchen, and bathroom, every kitchen and bathroom in my small town, in the neighboring city, in a thousand cities across a continent. Away it all goes but leaves behind trace after trace in the pipes-become-channels-become-subways that men can walk within and do walk within, looking for the leaks and the corrosion and the clogs that would flood a city street or back up into your basement if there were not someone willing to disappear into the street’s round, dark openings, to descend into a chamber knee-deep with the excrement and the sluice that we’ve all tried to forget, that we all have forgotten as soon as it leaves our sink or bathtub, and Mike Rowe has made a television series, an entire career out of the work that such men do (and such women),unclogging the sewers, digging a river’s worth of silt from inside the dam, shovelful by shovelful,stripping the feathers from bird carcasses,carrying away the excrement of enormous animals, because hard work is beautiful no matter the muck that you do it in, and the men and women who do it are, yes, beautiful, the women with fingers raw from turning seams in the coat factory, the men with faces blackened by the forge’s fire, the husband and wife toiling, bent over the long rows of strawberries, their infant bundled under a tree at the field’s edge, their ears listening for the sound of approaching sirens. —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Jana Bouma: “I love that poetry brings to our awareness the things and the people that we seldom think about, or that we actively avoid thinking about. For years, I tried to write this poem with that very intent until, one day, a visit to the dentist’s office provided me with that one ‘other thing’ that made the poem work, and the poem came pouring out.”
Related* “The Healthcare System” by Jana Harris * “Red River” by Jana Bataineh * “Teeth” by Maeve Wander Amoroso
Image: “Bird Ascending the Fire” by Barbara Hageman Sarvis. “Wildfire Dreams” was written by Linda Vandlac Smith for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Linda Vandlac Smith
WILDFIRE DREAMS
at night sleep slides its matchbox open sparks old torches a woodland of flares twizzling up through brittle boughs of dream all wick from roots to treetops everywhere lakelaps heat’s edge at the border of what is and isn’t afire what is wind or what creates it as smoke makes itslateral move throughcurve of vision nearly obfuscates a bird risen from shadow’s char not phoenix but dronemisshapen angel or ancestor I cry out for any stranger born into a wildfire of dreams only a distortion of myself parting troubledclouds making orange apologies from within the same dark scowl that ignites thunderstorm this incubator of flame that renews forest with one jagged strike —from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2024, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Barbara Hageman Sarvis: “I loved the poems very much, but felt that the poet of ‘Wildfire Dreams’ did an excellent job creating words, metaphors, and a narrative that describe both literally and emotionally the visual imagery in my painting.”
Related* “Last Reach” by Wendell Smith * “Four Loaves of Stone, Ascending” by Joel Vega * “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” by Devon Balwit
S. A.
GHAZAL—
The wine-dark pain spills over, in my bed alone.In nighttime stillness is my heart beset alone.Why did you make me this way, why did you make me?O God, why did you make the world, thus left alone?My lone soul that aches for others’ nearness,Why not make me like you, and be glad alone?My forebears made us for company in sorrow.You, motherless, childless, cannot beget, alone.Why was I born from another’s pain? A mother’sbody, carried me—but suffered and bled alone.To what do I owe the tormenting of this heart,A solitary drum that beats “not-dead,” alone.What do I owe you, thus born into this sorrow,Are we all bound to you in debt, alone?I was anointed “shame” ere having seen the light.Why give me to the world, naked, blood-clad, alone?Why must we plod and sweat and toil to till the earth?Answer me, Lord; we cannot live from bread alone.We were abandoned, then commanded to find you.Why send us prophets to die in your stead, alone?I’ll renounce you too, God, unveiled, unfettered, Ising, birdlike, free, and leave my prayers unsaid, alone.I trace my finger ’round the mirror Pleiades.Around me Time winds its unending thread, alone.—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
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S. A.: “As a multilingual poet growing up speaking Arabic, I’ve always been fascinated by classical Arabic poetry, and how these poems and poetic forms can be read, appreciated, contrasted, reworked, reflected, and reimagined. I wanted to see if the ghazal form could work as well in English as it would with the mellifluous, dense imagery of the Arabic language. I wanted to evoke many of the same images, phrases, and ideas that show up in ancient Arabic, Persian, and Urdu ghazals, and this decidedly heretical ghazal is still grappling with the same themes of love, loss, and god.”
Related* “Ghazal for Dida” by Karan Kapoor * “Alone in Love” by Mary Meriam * “Ghazal for New Moon” by Sophia Liu
Jeannine Hall Gailey
TO A SELF-PROCLAIMED MANIC DEPRESSIVE EX-STRIPPER POET, AFTER A READING
Remember: you are a blank pageno amount of shopping can cure.One night you go out in tasselsand the next like a nun, but we stilllove you. Can’t hold your liquor?Never mind. Little angel, little bomb-thrower—where would our mallsbe without you? And the readingsyou give in your corset are always goodfor a crowd. I didn’t stop to give youany advice. Get moving, screams SelfMagazine, or get medicated. Stay in the sun.One more roast beef sandwich to watch youwear yourself out for the muse. In the mirror,you continue to shrink and I tell you—eat this piece of cherry pie. It’s laced with cinnamon,and maybe lithium. Also, write, but rememberwriting will not be the death of you, or the life.Keep watching the skies. Or skis. Sign a happy tune.If this world doesn’t know the magic they behold,create it for them. Remember to paint over the lines.Forget your high heels and dance, Cinderella, dance.—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005
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Jeannine Hall Gailey: “Since memorizing ‘Anyone Lives in a Pretty How Town’ for a fifth-grade poetry recitation contest, I’ve been in the thrall of language and the elegance of this art form. I’m still working on writing something worthy of memorization by a future fifth grader.” (web)
Related* “Horoscope” by Jeannine Hall Gailey * “Self-Portrait as Escape Artist” by Jeannine Hall Gailey * “Elemental” by Jeannine Hall Gailey
John Arthur
WAYFARE
I spent most of a day putting the crib that came in 48 parts together, tightening every screw just enough, but not too much, the memory of its assembly living somewhere in me while you dreamt inside it for one thousand nights,it later taking only ten minutesto disassemble and one minutemore to box it up, to put it out onto the curb where the city came to take it away. —from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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John Arthur: “I’ve always been perplexed by poetry. I read and write it to make some sense of the confusion. My favorite poems surprise me and help me understand what I feel with more clarity. I don’t fully understand why I am drawn to poetry, but I am glad that I am, always have been, and likely always will be.”
Related* “I Reached Out and Am Awaiting a Response” by John Arthur * “Thank God for Sheep” by Arthur Santos * “Sad Robots” by James Arthur
Terri Kirby Erickson
MY FATHER
My father was a whistler and a penny lobber. He had no use for the lowest denomination of hard money, so handing pennies to him for change was followed by a quick coin toss to the sidewalk. Dad’s one-cent pieces are all over this town, including the pockets and piggy banks of strangers, something he never met. He could talk to anybody and they talked to him. While paying for paint or car parts or anything at all, cashiers would tell my dad the stories of their lives and he would listen. Once my ex-husband, who my father later referred to as a bad penny, was yelling at me because supperwasn’t hot on the table when he camehome from work. He didn’t know thatDad was upstairs until he came bounding down saying, Boy, if you’re so hungry, why don’t you eat a goddam cracker? which was one of the most satisfying moments of my entire life, and still worth a whistle.—from Poets Respond
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Terri Kirby Erickson: “Thanks for everything, Dad. I miss you every day.” (web)
Related* “Ode to Antiques Roadshow” by Susan J. Erickson * “No Body” by J. Divina Erickson * “The Fire” by Jaclyn Dwyer
Ace Boggess
“WHAT IS YOUR IDLE JOB?”
—question (with typo) in a mass email’s subject line
I wait for lunchtime at my desk, spinninglike a boy in a barber’s chair. Come noon, a walkpast pretty girls in flowered clothing, faces bloomingfrom sunlight’s brownish blush. I sit awhile,lotus-like beneath a shadowy willow, breathe smellsof cut grass, melting chocolate.I feed squirrels, sing love songs to pigeons,watching as they bob their heads in rhythm.Then it’s back to the office for coffeetasting like gasoline, maybe a doughnut on the sly.If my boss pops over, checking my progress,I greet him with a good-natured pat on the backto wipe the sticky glaze from my fingertips. After,it’s time for all the important tasks: I shuffleblank pages, transfer calls to disconnected numbers.I wink at my window-reflection. I liaise. Mostly,I deal with people come looking for me.I give directions, always surprised if they reappear,winded & flushed, to ask me where I am.—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets
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Ace Boggess: “I just like watching things, from at a distance at first and eventually from the center of the scene. I started writing as a way to take photographs of the things I was watching and, later, living. I began with songs as a fun way to take those photos, then moved on to my real love, novels. I picked up the bad habit of writing poems when I finally realized writing novels takes so long that too many important photos never get taken along the way.” (web)
Related* “Mango Smoothie” by Ace Boggess * “Goodbye for Now” by Ace Boggess * “Property” by Ace Boggess
Erik Campbell
ANNIVERSARY
for Alex Dimitrov
I was crying in front of the Quick Trip because I was out of cigarettes and left my wallet at home and it was my anniversary and so it was New Year’s Eve, and already too much had gone wrong for me too often to feel conspicuous about it, crying, I mean, since it is the end of articulate speech and why one leaves most crying men alone. I didn’t look up from my hands for almost an hour, and when I did, my eyes two fish-eyed lenses, I saw the blurred moon and another man crying, filling up his car, looking at me. “I’m crying because you are,” he whispered loudly over. “I’m also crying because maybe it means one of us must stop soon.” —from Rattle #47, Spring 2015
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Erik Campbell: “I read and write poetry to remind myself that I have a soul that needs a periodic tune-up.” (web)
Related* “What I Mean When I Use the Term, ‘Witch Doctor Sad'” by Erik Campbell * “The Man Kissed the Letter” by Erik Campbell * “On War, Both Foreign and Domestic” by Erik Campbell
Hannah Craig
SAVING FOR SLEEP
Night’s pitch-rolled on a deck of blight,and hands, they call, all hands aboard.Here’s the rigging of a dream—you, and you, and a naked girlbefore a throne of apples, gardens. A swayin the sail—here we are, the boatof my room, the belly, the bone sternand prow. These gulls above me, heading south.Oysters play cuckold to the beams,pitch fostered to every knot and seam. The give-out-give-inof cider press, the bellows honking incessantly.Listen, I will make you a fisherof men, if you follow me. The lines play out;your hammy fist, rib-cagecatching the butt-end and bruised, the fullbody of you above, swaying in earnest,the rip-tide yanking down, the silverscanting of your prey. I say the good hang onlong past their useful days.Here’s the dive, the dark-skinned boys of sleepwith fistfuls of pearl, with fistfuls of deep, deep.Now say this is my body and mean it.Not the dark room and sailors, not a platterof maggot and bread. Just an arm, here,a figurehead, and you on the deck,hauling in your catch.—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
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Hannah Craig: “Yesterday, while reading the newspaper, I saw a photo of a big-eyed youngster reading a book. The caption underneath read ‘… opens his eyes wide.’ I think that’s what reading poetry does for me … it teaches me to keep my eyes wide open. To pay attention. As Lorca writes in his City That Does Not Sleep, ‘If someone does close his eyes / a whip, boys, a whip! / Let there be a landscape of open eyes …’” (web)
Related* “What We Keep in Clay” by Hannah Siobhan * “The Minstrel Cycle” by Craig van Rooyen * “Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene, 2015” by Craig Santos Perez
Mike Maniquiz
COOKING FRUTTI DI MARE ON THIS EARLY EVENING BEFORE THE NIGHT FALLS ON KENTUCKY HILLSIDES
Today, as the locals love to say,is so cold the wolves ate the sheep for the wool.I open the bag.The contents of the sea come frozenand packed in plastic from Taiwan:squid mantles cut into rings,triangular fins, peeled shrimps,octopus tentacles and mussel meat.Garlic and onion sautéingtake the sound of rain.I pour seafood into the wokand the smell takes me to the sea.I ride on the waves of brineto a place bigger than all this white.I am in America, cooking Italian,a Filipino, outside is snow.Frutti di Mare won’t go over pastabut rice. This is my version of it.The watery-sweet scentlets me know rice is cooked. I liftthe lid and find pasty grains stoutand clumped, take last evening’s rice,dry, left standing uncovered in mykitchen all night. I grab a plastic ladleand scoop chunks into the stillsteaming cooker. Worlds agomy grandmother reminded me neverto put yesterday’s riceon top of recently cooked:something about lifenot prospering as you keepputting the old above the new,the old pressing down on the new.These days sun is hard to come by,rare as stalks of fresh green onions,as I keep opening the door and walkinginto the past, into old man weather,a colonizer whipping my back.My heart is a warm plate tonight.Outside the snow is like cold rice.—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005
Tribute to Filipino Poets
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Mike Maniquiz: “Poetry is water. Let me explain. When I started writing, the results were initially gratifying. But as I got deeper into it, reading more poetry and writing poems that tried to shout back to poetry I was reading (Merwin, Vallejo, Levis, Hernandez, Wright), I found myself unsatisfied like a tree whose roots have to dig further down to find water.”
Related* “Thank God for Sheep” by Arthur Santos * “Postcards From Bohol” by Angela Narciso Torres * “At the Terminal” by Misael Mesina Paranial
David James
HOW TO MAKE AMENDS
He was hungry, so he ate the couch, the one with the pull-out bed. Of course, when the wife came home, she was disgusted.
“Now what will we sit on, asshole? Last week it was the coffee table; the week before, two kitchen chairs and a lamp. What next, the bed?”
He hadn’t thought of eating the bed, but the idea was appealing. It probably would taste like sleep. Comfort food. He couldn’t respond to her–she was always right, so he went upstairs to lie down. Somehow, the bed knew what was coming. It shivered in fear. The man stroked the mattress, saying, “Don’t worry. I won’t eat you. I promise.” As the bed settled down, the man fell asleep and dreamed of eating the bed, mattress, baseboard, springs, pillows. He stuffed everything in his mouth, chewing, crunching, swallowing until he could no longer stand up. He laid there on the floor in the bedroom. When his wife came home after work, she undressed, climbed on top of him, slid under some loose sheets and slept. His chest rose and fell in time to her steady breathing. Wrapping himself around her, he knew she would be next. He would eat her and finally there would be peace between them, which was all he ever really wanted.
—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
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David James: “As I reach the half-century mark in September, I see more clearly how important each day is, each poem, each kiss. In fact, I like to think of each day as a poem, each poem as a kiss, each kiss as a chance to get it right, again.” (web)
Related* “Ode to the Mattress on the Side of the Interstate” by William Fargason * “At the Forty Winks Motel” by David James * “Persephone Remembers: The Bed” by Alison Townsend
Lizabeth Yandel
VILLANELLE OVER SPILLED MILK
every evening the milk spills at dinner.my puny hand grabs the plastic chalice, fails.dad swings his fist down like a hammer.the plates shiver and the tinny silver-ware shrieks. sister’s wide eyes silently waildon’t you spill that fucking milk at dinnerbut we both know i’m the baby sinner,i put my hand between my legs like a tail.dad slams down like a white-knuckle pastor.tv’s ted danson & kelsey grammerrerunning dad’s good old tavern days,now they gulp sorry milk with their liquor.my milky heart jumps out onto a platter.tv jingles our troubles are all the same! sad dad’s mad fist, a wind-up doll of angerwe can’t unwind. & ever after, the dangerrerunning where everybody knows your _____where the milk is ever spilling at dinnerwhere all the hands are fists are hammers—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Lizabeth Yandel: “Poetry allows me to reach beyond the precipice of human consciousness into the abyss of what we don’t yet understand and siphon something back. If there’s a point to art, I believe this is it. Even if it’s just the sense of something new, a faint silhouette, I feel I’ve done my job as an artist. Also, I seem to just write poems compulsively. I can’t help myself.” (web)
Related* “Elegy for Charles Porter” by Lizabeth Yandel * “When the Buddha Farmed Nebraska” by Peg Quinn * “The Joy of Cooking School” by David Cazden
Chad Frame
WE DON’T CALL IT A RIOT
for the Stonewall Inn, New York, 1969
That summer was an oven on self-clean—beyond hot. The cops raided clubs for weeks.Huddled, frightened men and men and womenand women and human and human heldat the end of a nightstick in contempt,being held in the arms of a loverin a brick-faced bar on Christopher Streetthe night they’d had enough of this treatment.We don’t call it a riot. No. Riot, noun: violent disturbance of the peaceby a crowd. Like the peace of gatheringwith your friends and family in a homeaway from home, the peace of the jukeboxplaying Let the Sun Shine, a trusted friendbehind the bar mixing you a cocktail,of dancing free and uninhibitedwhen the crowds march in to bash down the door,bash in your skull, bash-bash open the peacehard-fought-won so you can be standing here,unafraid for the first time in your life,perhaps, and not the family who threwyou out on the street, not the government who threw your card to the draft, not the menand women who threw slurs at you walkingdown that same street, not the church who threw fireand brimstone proclamations, nor these thugsmarching heavy-booted with their badgesand balled fists can take it away from you.Each brick of this place is home, each bottleis nourishment. Fingers close around themreflexively. And given fight or flight,when you’ve always picked the latter—and wherehas that ever gotten you, anyway?—fingers close around bricks and bottles, wordsof defiance bubble up to your lipsfrom somewhere deep in the boiling cauldronof your belly, you find the voice to sayNo. We don’t call this a riot. Call thisbeing cornered and lashing out. Call thisbeing pushed to the brink. Past it. Call thisresisting systematic oppression. Call this a rubber band stretched to snapping.Call this a blessing that I can stand herefifty-five years later unmolestedand read you this beneath a flag flyingmy colors—all of our colors. No onecan wrest a rainbow from the sky. Call thisa memorial for everyone whose sacrifice has gifted us the lifeand freedom to stand here, proud, and call thiswhat it really is. It’s not a riot—it’s rebellion. And it’s not finisheduntil we can all stand here, together,hand holding hand, and simply call it love.—from Poets Respond
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Chad Frame: “This month marks the 55th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Earlier this week, I was invited to read a poem at my county’s pride flag raising ceremony, and I felt the need to write something to commemorate the occasion. I live in a small town in suburban Pennsylvania, and growing up here as a gay man, I never thought I’d see the day when an event like this would be held, let alone be invited to participate. But when I was sent the prepared remarks of the Commissioners beforehand, and saw that there were repeated references to the ‘Stonewall Riots,’ I knew I needed to address it, even if it ruffled some bureaucratic feathers. Veterans of Stonewall have repeatedly stated that they prefer the term ‘uprising’ or ‘rebellion.’ And so, at the end of the ceremony, when it was my turn to speak, I read this poem. And later, when the local news reported on the event, they used the right terms. Every education and breakthrough is a victory, no matter how small.” (web)
Related* “The Polar Bear” by Jennifer Givhan * “Morning at the Elizabeth Arch” by Joe Weil * “Playground” by Teresa Mei Chuc
Susanna Mishler
THE AFTERLIFE: IN THE SUMMER HOUSE
A scrap of canvas tacked to the kitchen wallreads, in Russian and English:AT THE DARK TIMEPULL OUT THE CORD.A slim arrow points towardsome lost device that shifts nowin a north coast ice pack, orwas crushed and swallowedby a flock of Arctic ternsand migrates from pole to pole inthousands of fibers radiating throughfood chains: the broken stringshanging from closet lights. Linesthat raise half a window blind.—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
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Susanna Mishler: “I write as an act of rebellion against fruit flies, snobbery, and Newton’s 2nd law of motion.”
Related* “Keychain Peep Show” by William Trowbridge * “How to Turn Off a Ceiling Fan” by Nasreen Yazdani * “Reeling in a Skate on Kachemak Bay, Alaska” by Susan Elbe
Florence Weinberger
FUCK THE CARBURETOR
I was just out of high school. Yes, I said, I am a bookkeeper,when I’d had only one year of numbers a few decimals short of failure. They hired me, sent me upstairs,sat me at a desk cantilevered over the body shop, a pack of condoms in one of the drawers, a fountain pen— and below me, all day, banging away, fixing wrecks,the men cursed, fuck this, fuck that, fuck the crankshaft, fuck these fucking valves, until one or another would remember I was up there, an embodied angelsent to keep an eye on them and would sheepishly apologize, and soon forget.That was the fifties, fuck still a dirty word. Even cock. Evenvagina. No longer obscene, fuck reprises on movie screens, collegecampuses, the news. What is this loon fever that flies off tongues ad nauseam, mumbled,thundered, sung and rapped, tattooed onknuckles, slapped on walls? Wikipediacalls it profane, but not as bad as cunt inEngland, where it’s first. Motherfucker comes in second, but back to fuck, still censored in some quarters, as if it causesskin to peel, as if it comes with grief, for the seeping out of tenderness, abandonmentof the long caress, promises whispered, time given, held back, given over to therise that came with love and want. When motherfucker eructs, the rage that rises in thethroat is only love, begging to be won again.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Florence Weinberger: “When I was eight years old, I said ‘fuck you’ to my mother; the beating I got baffled me. Of course I had no clue, only that it was a bad word, not yet in general use when I graduated from high school in 1950. Hearing it spewed with such gleeful abandon on the floor of a body shop in the Bronx, it still had its power to shake me. ‘Grist for the mill,’ as Ram Dass said of just about everything. I took it to include a poem kept waiting for all these years.”
Related* “Nascent January, 2018, After Rain” by Florence Weinberger * “Feeling Fucked Up” by Cortney Lamar Charleston * “I Hate Ikea” by Leticia Priebe Rocha
Roberto Ascalon
THE FIRE THIS TIME,
or How Come Some Brown
Boys Get Blazed Right
Before Class and Other
Questions Without Marks
how much damn brokedoes it take to want toburn just before classlung green with chaoshow many times thepolice come to the doorway past late, your auntieface forlorn and flashingin the turning blue, howmuch knuckle in a boyfist gotta break cheek tillbody want to go numbhow much brave yougotta front, pay forwardlike a hard stare, like awork muscle jawhow many legal paperssay stay or go, right ornothing, home or jaillove or palm skinhow many wordsor promises did dadmom and god knowswho else have to crushso that you spit outyour eyes and slouchlike a demon, daringme to call out yourname, as if it hadpower anyway, as ifyour own name, whenyou strangle it out your throat spill godstuff, god, like a brokeegg, baby born intofire, how come fireput you to bed insteadof sweet hands, goodhands, why they put badhands, why bad handswhy the fire this timegod, why, we ain’t donenothing, nothing yetnothing yet and nothingwrong, except the babiesare on fire, on fire, babiesburning by the stairsbefore school begins—from Rattle #42, Winter 2013
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
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Roberto Ascalon: “I’ve taught a poetry class in this one school for the last eight years. It’s been fantastic. But hard sometimes—it’s a credit retrieval school—the last ditch for kids who’ve been expelled for being angry or being sad or being high or for fighting or cursing out a teacher or not speaking English well enough or scratching fuck you on the bathroom mirror or being pregnant or skipping school for weeks—conditions and actions that often haunt the poor and the black and the brown. With lots of love, freedom, encouragement and a safe space, I find most kids want desperately to read their work out loud. But recently I had this one boy, who, by his very presence, prevented others from reading their poetry. Class fizzled when he was in the room. He’d talk brazenly on the phone during class or slouch deep in his chair and make offhandedly cruel comments under his breath. His swagger and arrogance conveyed total disrespect—all with this amazing smile and high cheek bones. Infuriatingly, he could have been a leader if he’d wanted to—but instead chose to laugh at other folks when they read. One day I had enough. I stepped to him, suited up in manly-man aggression, kicked him out. After he left the room, to my deep shock and surprise, the other youth called me out and argued with me. They said I wasn’t being right. They said that he needed the class as much, even more, than they did. They saw how unfair it was—all of it. So, I let him back in the next day. There was an uneasy détente. The other kids eventually read their poems. He wrote a handful of lines that year, maybe ten or twelve. A win. I wrote this poem for him—and for the other youth who wanted him back in the room. For Miss Diane and Lasheera and Romeo and Rica. For all of the brown boys that get denied by people like me. For James Baldwin’s nephew.”
Related* 2013 Rattle Poetry Prize Winners * “As Fire, My Father” by Michael P. McManus * “Las Vegas” by Brock Guthrie
Laurie Uttich
MY 88-YEAR-OLD MOTHER-IN-LAW DECIDES TO MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
and I want to say, oh, Rose, why? but there’s no way to pass the primerib and pretend the words You’ll be dead soon enough aren’t standingbehind her, waiting to be said. Instead, I say, Maybe we strive for morepleasure this year instead and she nods, but her dead husband walks inand a wave of grief floods the floors. We wade awhile in all she’s lost—so many streams of her joy drained dry—and then I rise and slice the rum cake I made that morning. I cut through the glaze of sugar and pecans and present it on a plate that still bears the prints of my mother who gave them to me before she died. I center it, sprinkle it with cocoa, and bless it with cream I whipped by hand. I slide silver from the drawer and polish it on a clean cloth and I set it in front of her like a sacrifice to something I’m not brave enough to name. My mother-in-law smiles:as she aged, she’s learned to recognize love when it appears on anotherwoman’s wedding china. She places the cake on her tongue and 20 years fall away. We sit in the exhale and we breathe in all we were born to delight in and then the moment passes and she is on to sleep cycles and squeezingback into a size 12 and catching up with Ancestory.com. She makes a list of all she didn’t achieve last year and asks me if I think she’ll live to see her granddaughter marry. I don’t say, Who knows if any of us will? but days have passed and I keep thinking about pleasure and how it comes when youcall it. A red cardinal studies the birdfeeder outside my window and watches over the brown one while she lifts her beak to the seeds. The sun streaks the sky and the white plume of a plane heads toward the west. My goddaughter holds a newborn a thousand miles away and her baby’s scent wanders into my living room. I settle into the soft skin of her neck and drink her in. Later, I’ll study my husband’s shoulders and measure their width with the same appreciation I did on a dance floor over 35 years ago. Look, I know we’re all dying and some of us are already dead. But there is a book by my bed, a dog who considers me her own, and there is rum and cake and words that wait within. Tomorrow, I’ll walk by the river and the water will be brown and the snakes sleeping in the shade, but I’ll only see the way the sun blinksbetween the trees and winks at the waves. I’ll think of my sons, butI won’t wrap them in worry. I’ll only see the great gift they are, the men they are on their way to becoming. I’ll let everything I love—everything I will ever love—settle on my own narrow shoulders and I’ll hold it out to you, Reader of Poems, on a plate from my mother’s cabinet. I’ll ask you to study its face. You can see it, right? It’s there, in front of you, scratched but not cracked. It could have broken a thousand times in 60 years, but still it survives, shines. It’s too obvious of a metaphor—I know that—but I don’t know how to call Pleasure by its first name and not fall to my knees when it answers. I’m one of those who bleed. The world’s suffering is my own. (I know you’re the same.) But I can’t stop thinking about how much the world needs poetry and pleasure and everything that wavers in between and I don’t know much about resolutions or all the ways we can thrive (or hide), but I want to pull you into my kitchen, place a plate next to a fork, and tell you the secretto rum cake is 5 eggs and vanilla pudding and Bacardi Dark and when you leave for the night and step out into the black where the Florida frogs speak in a language older than ours; I want you to match their pitch with your own. —from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Laurie Uttich: “My poetry tends to be full of fury or grief. It stumbles into a room, throws an emotion on the floor, and slams the door on the way out. I revel in the release of my Inner Poet who is so different than the person I walk around as every day. She shows her teeth and she doesn’t spend a millisecond worried about what anyone thinks (even you). But one of the men I write with on Fridays at a Florida prison often calls me a contradiction and chides me for my ‘sad stories’ while he writes his own poems about joy. This year, I decided to try and do the same.” (web)
Related* “Sometimes Peter, But Never Paul” by Laurie Uttich * “To My Student with the Dime-Sized Bruises on the Back of Her Arms Who’s Still on Her Cellphone” by Laurie Uttich * “Peculiar Crimes” by Laurie Blauner
Suzanne Lummis & Ron Koertge
PICNIC
Henry James said he loved the words summer afternoon.Only suicidal snowmen think of a summer afternoon.And, only shady women throw out the line, Babe,my Stroke of Midnight wants your Summer Afternoon.No wonder the moon sulks and broods. It’s an astronomicalbody, not a kitchen light left on one summer afternoon!Astronomical it is, and affecting, that moon.It’s got me plunging toward a rhyme: summer afternoon.No influential figure, not love or unlove. Not evena shabby mini-mart. Nothing to mar a summer afternoon. Oh Nothing, with your No-Thing-ness—get lost, Nada! Nothing can despoil this summer afternoon. Tedium before and boredom after. In between, “Maybe”and an urgent “Please” take up a summer afternoon. But what can they defend against? Back to Nothing.Bombs have fallen on summer afternoons.The sight of a mountaineer’s ice ax buried in a rest stoppicnic table revives an ordinary summer afternoon.What ruins every outdoor meal? Ants, especially giantants from outer space, some calm summer afternoon.—from Prompt Poem of the Month
May 2024
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Prompt: Find a partner and write a collaborative poem in some kind of form.Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “Ghazals have always struck me as a literary picnic—a checkerboard blanket brimming with many different dishes composed of unique couplets. This modified, collaborative ghazal, with its ‘No-Thing-ness’ whimsicality served up alongside more serious stanzas, unpacks a memorable conversation for us all under the summer afternoon sun.”
Related* “Cat Women of the Moon” by Ron Koertge * “A Surprise Visit” by Ron Koertge * “Dear Citizen,” by Ron Koertge
Dean Marshall Tuck
PARKING METER
If a slot machine is a one-armed bandit,what does that make you? A cyclopeantroll? I don’t think it will catch on. Maybe there’s nothing poetic about you. A friend’s mother died the other day, and it occurred to me at the service—I’m embarrassed to admit so late into my forties—that time is the greatest commodity, maybe the only one that matters. Time is money, people say, but is the inverse true?I started thinking about the ways we buy time on this earth, and you were the first one I thought of. But there are other ways: jukeboxes, payphones—coins for time with voices. Concerts, movies,theme park tickets, hotel stays, prostitutes—dollars for time in places we’d rather be, with people we’d rather see. Rent money,the light bill—an exchange for a makeshift home and delayed darkness. Is food fundamentally just a purchase of more time in our own bodies? After the funeral, I stopped downtown. I found you still with a little time left, someone’s wasted minutes. I fed coin after coin into the slot, watching the countdown increase, buying more time, each quarter, less a guarantee against a ticket or tow, but rather, a promise to my car: “There’s no way I’m going to die before I come back for you.” I dropped anotherquarter and relaxed, assured I would returnin fewer than 53 minutes, and soon enough, head across town, maybe for a sandwich,leaving you standing there with the rows of your brothers, each one with their steadyinternal ticking, little defused time bombs that never explode, silently counting down whatever’s left.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Dean Marshall Tuck: “Don’t you sort of miss dropping coins into payphones and parking meters and jukeboxes? I was thinking about this, and the sounds the coins made falling down their slots, and I suppose that’s what began my poem. Then things took a turn. It’s hard not to see mortality in everything. I did not expect to get there while contemplating the parking meter, but here we are.”
Related* “Elegy for My 1958 Volkswagen” by Ruth Bavetta * “Old Flame” by L. K. * “Slow Gods #6” by Johnny Dean Mann
David Rosenthal
ANTI-AUBADE
You shuffle through your waking house as thoughthe miracle of dawn does not deserveacknowledgement, as though the way you godownstairs, through doorways in the dark, and swervearound the furniture, is nothing more than habit, as if comfort doesn’t guideyour feet across the heated hardwood floor.Your stomach turns at stirs of life outside.You’re bracing for the dread of this new week,though really you don’t know a dreadful thing.You scroll through lifting darkness. What you seekis anybody’s guess. The song you singturns out to be appropriated blues,and genocides are other people’s news.—from Poets Respond
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David Rosenthal: “I write early in the morning, so I tend to write about the dawn a lot. I also get most of my news in the early morning, scrolling through news outlets and social media. Those two elements of my morning routine intersect in this poem.”
Related* “Pretty Pair” by David Rosenthal * “Aubade” by Pit Menousek Pinegar * “Aubade” by Cheri L. R. Taylor
David Kelly-Hedrick
IN THE BLEACHERS
We stand on the sidelines watching our children play.We cheer for our kids and against the others, thoughwe could try cheering for the other kidsand against our own,or, we might join with the opposing parentsand cheer for all our kids,and against everyone on the next field,or against the team playing across the street,or across this town, or over the border.We could just stand there and watch as witnesses for all,for the coaches, the beleaguered referee,the kids on the bench, the grass on the field,garbage collecting under the bleachers,ants disappearing into a sidewalk crack,the gathering clouds, the darkening fields behind us,the houses over the hill.An ambulance waits in shadows just outside the stadium gates.A raccoon drags a wounded foot through the brambleswhile a young woman weeps alone in the parking lot.But those are pieces of our flesh playing out on the field.Chunks of our hearts and gasps of our spirits.This is their game happening here, playing now in this stadium builtin a hollow where regional winds gather and swirl.I even feel guilty for tucking a paperback of poems into my overcoat.The scoreboard sucks us into its frenzy of ticking seconds.We stare at the gulf between home and away and hopefor a victory that will not be recognized in a single ribbon or trophy on theshelf but will unroll itself across the flutter of years and pulse across palmsgripping a succession of hands and handles.We are rooted to a cold aluminum bench, and our mittened clappingsounds like another failed attempt at turning over the engine of a giant car.Above, a pair of osprey have built a home atop one of the field lights.They fly stick-gathering missions during the game.We could cheer for the dusk.It is coming. It is here.—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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David Kelly-Hedrick: “There are so many great poems out here and each one is like a transit pass for the soul, valid, permission given, full access granted, to roam. I like holding onto these scraps of paper and the movement given. I like being in the swirl of poetry.”
Related* “Enchilada Night” by Mike Faran * “The Future as We Planned It” by Peter Davis * “Show and Tell” by Bob Hicok
Erik Tschekunow
GO HOME BOY GO HOME
It’s in the story of an inmate whose dogshows up at the prison and lies at the doubleline of fences. Whenever a rabbleof prisoners struts out to the yard for rec,the sad, lumpy mutt rises, drags its bodyalong the chain-link, stroked by the braidsof tempered metal, and for one hour a dayhe and his master stare at each otherthrough sixteen feet of Concertina, fangedhelixes stacked like hay bales. “Go home, boy.Go home. Who did this? Was it Sheila? She leftyou here?” The dog stays for weeks. A guardadmits to leaving it peanuts and pork rinds.Then on a morning the inmate wakes feelingfluish and almost skips rec, when hegoes outside anyways, his dog is gone.Down the gravel access road toward the pineswhere the state highway heads north or south, the wayis blurred, like heat, like dust. “He finally obeyed,”the inmate says to himself, though the absencecatches him like another sentence. He kneels by the fence,the hinge of his jaw stiffening, something densebut spectral rising into his throat and afterwiping a wrist across his cracked bottom lip lets outa long howl. It lifts but faltersas he fixes his hashed gaze all the wayto where he imagines his call dissolves.None of the inmates on the yard look, they don’tlaugh or blast from their wellsprings of derision.All seem to have lowered their headsas if searching for something delicatedropped near their institution boots.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Erik Tschekunow: “As is evident in the subject matter of this, I spent five years in a federal prison for an addiction-fueled offense. More than anything else, poetry helped get me through my bid.”
Related* “Phone Sox” by Matthew Feeney * “Just in Case You Should Meet Me on the Street” by Erik Campbell * “Great Caesar’s Ghost” by Erik Campbell
Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Of California, the Wild” was written by Breonne Stiglitz for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Breonne Stiglitz
OF CALIFORNIA, THE WILD
There, on a midnight railway, beyond the static of the locusts, a small, broken hum from an old radioblinks in and out,in and out, through Cuyahoga Valley when Ohio was for lovers.A golden sepia-toned starlet leans on the glass of the window and wondersas the steam blows from the engine ahead.A man in a frock coat and a three-piece suittips his hat as her wonder floats into the aisle where it collideswith his glistening glare.Her rosy, peach cheeks pullher mouth to her ears, and she can hear the distant voices of California, the wild calling her name. There,where the cars drivefaster, the trees turnto telephone poles, and the lights burnan afterimage into the eyes of twilight—puddles spilt in the street, reflectingthe stoplights, the theater, the neon signs that curl fingers inwards to lift skirts and seduce prey, to convince onlookersto buy lipstick and pearls that bleed and coillike snakes around the necks of the Beautiful and the Enlightened.And it pulls like a venom, pulsing,a steam engine travelingacross the skin of a Hollywood dream,where it once whistled like a biting catcall, that now, sits amongst the brush and thistleto shelter the rabbits from the foxes’ mouths, an orchestra of crickets—the sounds of the night begging the locomotive to move again under God’s collection of dying stars, wheels that once turned as time does.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There is a dreamy, cinematic quality to this image that I felt was perfectly captured by ‘Of California, the Wild.’ I found it effortless and satisfying to imagine this ‘golden sepia-toned starlet’ looking out the train window until the natural landscape fades and ‘the trees turn / to telephone poles.’ There is magic in the way the poet contrasts the glamour and glitz of Hollywood (“the neon signs/that curl fingers inwards”) against the still-wild California land. The poem ends with a haunting reminder that the train is an agent of time–once relentless and vibrant; now frozen, just a memory.”
Related* “Tracks” by Matthew Murrey * “Broken Places by Daylight” by Sandra Kasturi * “The Widower” by Nick Bertelson
Mather Schneider
MIDWEST HOUSES
Full of a million thingsthat cost a dollar apieceNothing is truly old or truly modern everything could be anyone’seven the family pictures on the walls Giant Sears and Roebuck dollhousesdo people live hereor stuffed animals?Spice racks of hollow glass idolsthat are never touchedsalt is the one true god Shoot or poison animalsto keep them off the lawnreplace with plastic deer and flamingoes No stone lions at the entrywaysonly ceramic frogs Humid hairy armpit summer afternoonsthe grass they mow and mow and mow and mowThe thunderof a drunk fatherhome from bowling nightA man sets his alarm clockclicking in the darklike an S.O.SAt Grandpa’ssmall circle of familymedicine ball conversationAt the end of the summerour last kiss tastes like bug-spray—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Mather Schneider: “I don’t like trying to come up with something clever for these things. I write poetry and prose when there is something I want to put down. I don’t like writing for the hell of it.”
Related* “Free-Form Bolero” by Mather Schneider * “Suicide Lane” by Mather Schneider * “Gutter Punk” by Mather Schneider
Doug Ramspeck
BOTTOMLANDS DREAM
The boy fell from the Monahegnee Bridge,and his parents buried him, and the yearswere a cottonmouth swimming in an oxbow lake, and the boy became an owl as he felland lived in the woods so that when he held himself motionless, he felt himself becomingthe gray bark of the tree. And sometimesthe boy swooped low across the bottomlandsbehind the house of his parents, and sometimesthey watched him going by, and maybe he helda mouse in his talons, or maybe the sun’s eyeblurred across the glass and transformed himinto a diffused smear of photons. One timewhen he fell, he was caught in the updraftof a prayer lifting itself toward the heavens,and another time he landed in the lake thenbecame a catfish swimming along the muddy bottom, his body twisting and raising swirlsof murky visions. And his parents dreamedsometimes of opening their arms at the bottom of the bridge and catching him. And the boy became a cottonmouth twisting his wayacross the water’s surface, and the waterrippled out behind him and made of everythinga transitory motion, something there then gone.And the boy whispered in the air as he went by,I fall and fall but never strike the ground.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Doug Ramspeck: “I wrote this poem in the fall, while being distracted by a bear with her two cubs as they climbed the oak trees outside my office window and fed on acorns and sometimes napped.” (web)
Related* “Bottomlands Widow” by Doug Ramspeck * “One True Poem” by Doug Ramspeck * “Gift Skull” by Doug Ramspeck
Kirk Robinson
THE BREAKS
To learn more about your new Kenmore
washer, break the plastic seal.
—from the manufacturer’s instructions
I’ve a friend who says, “Treat anything mechanicalas if it’s just about to break.”I’ve a feeling broken-heartedhe’s talking about himselfin relation to his ex-wife,but I don’t tell him that. She called me break the newsjust before she left him. “Breaking up” was her phrase,as if we were all broken promise still in grade school.“I’m leaving,” she said, “For good.” I pictured him exactlywhere I knew he was at the time—in mid-schussbreakneck on a mogul-filled downhill in Vail.He wouldn’t be back for two days, and had no ideait would be to a broken home. And then,no note, on the kitchen table or anywhere.No red box on the wall: IN CASE OF EMERGENCYBREAK GLASS.Two weeks later we sat line breakin front of a ridiculous amount of beer.I was trying, at that point, to explain to himthat humans didn’t invent weaving … breaking pointthat it was an innovation of certain brightly colored,long-beaked birds, and when we stumbled uponthe wonderful, twisted nests, we figured them outby breaking them apart.Something in him broke loose, I guess. I’d been talkingas if I could say anything groundbreakingabout love. In retrospect, he probably should’ve broke my nose,but all he did was sit there, for the first time, slumped overin a bar, and cry. “I looked everywhere,” he said,“for a note.” Everywhere. He kept saying it. What’s the word?What’s the word for one of those great big crashing waves?—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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Kirk Robinson: “I’ve always loved poems—like David Clewell’s ‘A Heart for Patricia’—that take a single, well-worn idea and then run at it from angles until it’s new again. When a friend of mine spoke those words of advice about mechanical things, I happened to hear a decent line in my head. Then I sat down, and I made a break for it.”
Related* “Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)” by Felix Stefanile * “What Do You Give” by Amy Elizabeth Robinson * “In Lies Lie Beliefs” by Bruce Robinson
Ryan McCarty
ODE TO THE COP NEXT TO THE ONE WITH THE PEPPER SPRAY
Your cheek turns, Christ-likefrom your buddy with the buddha belly blowing chemicalson crowds of my students. One fallsfacedown while her own mucusand sweat bottlenecks in the rush to exit every hole she has. Youmight or might not know the blindterror of drowning, the lung-tornscream that almost always doesthe trick eventually, boosted by the gutsheaving underneath, till air breaksthrough. Ten seconds, not like Floyd,but enough to feel your motherpounding inside your skull,calling for you this time, to forget the grasshasn’t always mixed with gravelon your knees and palms in a prayerof almost-dying. Officer, you knowthe straight-backed virtueof duty, eyes cast to the horizon,white vapors spreading to the morning. You avoid the sightof a baseball cap skirting the fog, kneeling, eyes on your chin, helpingthe retching shoulders rise.I’ll buy you a beer. Let’s rewindand rewatch on half-speed, waitfor one foot to stir, one hand to dropthe pose. Never. You never break. While we play you again and again, you can explain, for all of us non-heroes, how to hold the line, to pitythe spastic terrified flappingof robins, escaping their trees in the chokeyour boy backhands into the crowd,how to see the birds disperse when sense commands, how to lookaway from a body and really believe.—from Poets Respond
May 19, 2024
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Ryan McCarty: “I keep rewatching this video of University of Michigan campus police pepper spraying a crowd of my students, colleagues, friends, and community members. Most of my life (but especially the last dozen years or so) have been spent watching the cops who are doing the beating, the spraying, the kneeling, the dragging. But this time I can’t stop looking at one cop near the pepper sprayer. They’re looking upward, toward the east and some trees where I know hundreds of birds nest, and the sun had just risen. Can poetry help us understand that moment? Can anything?” (web)
Related* “What Will We See When the Lights Go Out?” by Ryan McCarty * “Too Much Wahala in This Country” by Abdulbaseet Yusuff * “Poem Written in Stolen Polling Place Pen” by James D’Agostino
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
RAPUNZEL
Think what it must have been like for her, cagedin her tower, the small window cut into darkstone, the hours it took to brushand untangle her hair, waiting for the princeto come so she could let down her hairand he could climb up to her room.Think what it must have been like for her, lonelyand starved for attention like the girls nowwho stare into their bathroom mirrors, brushingand combing their hair, applying perfume, mascara,skin softener, make-up, all in honor of the man whowill stand outside the window, their beauty a braid theyclimb up on, their lives spent, breathless and silent,waiting for a man to rescue them as though their ownhands were not strong enough, their own hearts notbrave enough, their own minds not quick enough forthem to save themselves.—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003
Tribute to Italian Poets
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan: “Poetry is my passion—writing it and sharing it with others through my books, setting up readings for other poets, editing a magazine and anthologies, and organizing prizes. My mother always said, ‘The more I gave away, the more I had to give,’ referring to food, and I have tried to do the same thing with poetry.” (web)
Related* “Shame Is the Dress I Wear” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan * “‘It’s Been a Week …” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan * “The Cedar Keepsake Box” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Amit Majmudar
SHOVELS
In a Polish forest as a boyIn a Cleveland driveway as an old manHe shoveled, he shoveledThe secret was to spin and fall A heartbeat in advance of the gunshotsOver the hole in historyHe shoveled, he shoveledA heartbeat in advance of the aspirinIn a Cleveland snowdrift as an old manIn a Polish winter on another continentHe shoveled, he shoveledIn Bialowieza, Europe’s last old-growth forestTrees like people hunted to extinctionChildren like winged seeds sailing to a far soilHe shoveled, he shoveledA little divot in a big continentAnd shook out seeds from a paper packetBetter than clawing his way downAs he clawed his way upThrough a Polish mass grave as a boyIn Bialowieza, where the last oaks crowded into a ghettoHis pale forearm sprouting in the moonlightDirt and blood lining his fingernailsLying on his back in the moundHe shoveled, he shoveledScreaming soundlessly into the soundless flurriesIn a Cleveland driveway as an old manIn a Polish forest as a boy—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Amit Majmudar: “I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland filled with Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their descendants. I was always fascinated by the histories that lived in the accents and eyes of my friends’ grandparents. This poem was prompted by my memory of a classmate’s grandfather who survived the Holocaust by hiding in Europe’s last old-growth forest and died in an Ohio winter many decades later, while shoveling snow. The image of the shovel connected, for me, Josh’s grandfather’s past and his end, for he had been forced, when a child, to help dig a mass grave.” (web)
Related* “Naming the Child” by Amit Majmudar * “Newsquiz” by Amit Majmudar * “Antiviral Cocktail: A Sequence” by Amit Majmudar
Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Tracks” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Matthew Murrey
TRACKS
after Tomas Tranströmer
It is the last night—stars, moonlight, thin clouds—and I am sad nothing remains but the baggage car where I packed myself still crying and holding onto my mother’s soft skirt the second day of school, where I stowed my sister and I watching a black and white movie on TV until our father says “Turn that off.”My first time seeing you is in there, along with a pairof shoes, a funeral, a bed on the floor, and two horizons.What a noon it was when the whole train was on its wayacross rivers and fields headingtoward mountains and the sea. I was looking forward to far more, but this will have to do: bright moonlight, leafless trees,stars forever out of reach.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2024, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Gerrie Paino: “The evening I came upon the solitary train car that is the subject of my Ekphrastic Challenge photograph, I felt a sense of fascination and mystery. What stories would that deteriorating hulk tell, should it be given a voice? The opportunity to have so many talented poets share their answers was both a delight and a challenge, but, ultimately, I kept returning to ‘Tracks,’ as the one that felt absolutely right. ‘It is the last night,’ begins this poem, begging the question, ‘Last night for what?’ From that point on, we are offered deftly-rendered fragments of memory which include a ‘mother’s soft skirt’ being clutched by a child afraid to go to school, a gruff father, and, most striking to me, ‘… a pair / of shoes, a funeral, a bed / on the floor, and two horizons.’ The final stanza, with its sense of longing and resignation, seems to summarize everything that might be contained in that deteriorating behemoth as it crumbles, inexorably, beneath ‘stars forever out of reach.’”
Related* “Map to the Moon” by Matthew Murrey * “In the Nostalgia Chair” by Matthew Murrey * “That Bit Me” by Matthew Murrey
Danielle Lisa
I’M CONVINCED YOU ACTUALLY LIKED THE WHOLE WHEAT PANCAKES
for Mom
Remember the first apartment we chose? When it was timefor us to finally live together and we had to find something fastand imperfect. With the landlord who barged in every time we were too loud—I think she had an 8 p.m. bedtime. It was stomaching that,and then the new school, where I had to wear a uniformand listen to classmates brag about how much money daddy spent on them. In Spanish class, we were assignedto draw a diagram of our homes, labeling each space. I thought nothing of our four rooms, until hands startedto rise, small voices asking, “What’s the Spanish spellingfor movie theater?” Apparently, some of them had skate parks. That’s when it got hard to get me to school. I remember it well: your relentless hands around my relentless ankles. Every morning, you pulled, and I fought, until it was too late to catch the bus, and you had to drive me.And every morning, you gave me a bowl of Agave syrup, with some whole wheat pancakes swimming inside. You actedlike you hated them, but each morning, when I held the bowl in my hands like just being near them was wrong, you’d have me pass them up front and you’d suck them down in seconds. I’ll never forget when I asked you one of my first sex questions, and you replied with, “I don’t know, Google it.”But it was that morning of 6th grade when I didn’t want to go to school, so you wrote a note that began with, “Danielle’s under the weather,” and justified it to me with, “Well … there’s weather happening above us,” that I first knew living together was going to be an adventure, which is always what I wanted most of all, not love, or happiness, just something to talk about, which (at some point) translated to writing. I wasn’t sure where anything would take us, but look at here. What we have built together. I can say anything, and nothing rattles. You can say anything, and what wehave stands still. We can climb on it, threaten it, lightit on fire, but the beast we built just yawns, and we go quietly on, in our (sometimes covert) little ways of loving one another. I’m twenty-five, and you push meonto the sidewalk when a car comes. Always desperateto save my life, not knowing you already did. —from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Danielle Lisa: “At the age of two, I had a bad fall. I cried and cried. Nothing my mom did was calming me down until, in her attempts to say something comforting, she happened to use two words that rhymed. The crying stopped instantly, as I repeated the words back in awe. She knew in that moment that her daughter was a poet. Now at 26, poetry doesn’t get me to stop crying; it makes me start. It has been a lifeline. My dream is to write full-time, but for now, I will continue to work office jobs and sneak off to the bathroom whenever an idea strikes.”
Related* “How to Become a Happy Woman, e.g.” by Danielle Carne * “An Incomplete List of Last-Minute Allegations” by Danielle DeTiberus * “My Will Be Done” by Lisa C. Krueger
David T. Manning
AT THE SPRING
Before she could drink from the garden hosea cardinal landed on her wristand plunged its beak into the clear bubbling.She froze in scarlet presencebut managed to gentle the nozzle’s flow.Never so close to a wild thing,she was soaked but held rock-stillas the redbird clung to her wristtilting its head up and downas it drank, so close she could seeits tiny tongue. There was a song—whether in her stunned mindor from a distant bird, she could not tell.For a moment nothing died and the windslost their ways. The hose chirredsoftly like a night-thing’s calland she heard the redbird lispingas it dipped again and again into the spring.—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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David T. Manning: “I’m fascinated by birds for their beautiful alien lives and intelligence, so different from ours. Once, in Wrightwood, California, a green-tailed towhee landed on the toe of my shoe to check me out. Later, a nuthatch hopped to within my hand’s reach and virtually commanded me to leave his feeder alone. The world is stranger than my wildest imaginings. I fully expect a cardinal to land on my wrist and drink from a hose someday.”
Related* “Not My World” by David T. Manning * “Topless Swimming Pool” by Britt Luttrell * “To the Woman Who Ruled ‘Every Rape Is Not a Gender-Motivated Hate Crime'” by Bayleigh Cardinal
Michael Jones
BUBBA COUNTRY
Nineteen and drivin my fly ass whipto Malvern to visit my grandparents.Could taste freshly killed bird and homefries cooked in a skillet cast in 1914.Sugar, honey, baby, swirled in the airI breathed. And that foul goat Rocky,who chased me when I was eleven, that bastard still had the run of the farmbut now had tennis balls on his horns. Drove on I-20 stereo bumpinstopped at the Blue Monkey Loungefor a leak and caffeine. I knew I was in bubba country when nigger this nigger that slurred from a man in Carhartt overallsslobbering drunk and staggering my way. The crowd drifted back but the niggershit didn’t faze me after living in the south.I wasn’t going to run from a fist fight. The asshole pulled a pussy gun,a twenty-two that spat a bulleteight millimeters into my shin. Blood gushed over my boot as I ran. Bulletwound flamed when I put in the clutch. Tongue felt heavy, face weighted and drained. Stopped in front of the police station, world dark in my vision. Lay my fist on the horn.Pissed off cop came out to see what was wrong. Dude was six seven six eight and called me son. Carried me like a baby into the station, asked a few questions, dispatched a car to the bar. Felt like a forkliftwhen he hoisted me back up against his body armor. I slumped in the rear of his vehicle. The doc at the hospital called mesir. Plucked that bullet with a pair of blueplastic forceps. Filled the hole with bone putty. Hurt like a motherfucker. Called Grandma.She blessed me out for not calling sooner. Grandpa wanted to off the guy. The asshole at the bar was still tossingback shots when the cops arrived. Got three hots and a cot for two years. If I had walked into the bar and shot that redneck for fun, I would have beendrug behind a truck or hung. —from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Michael Jones: “I am the middle child of 12 siblings from three marriages. I grew up in gang-infested neighborhoods around military bases in Southern California. After high school, I broke the cycle of young black men perpetuating street violence and enlisted in the Army. This career would show me the world in many spectrums: The beauty of different cultures, the splendor of nature, and the horrors of combat. After the service I attended 2 HBUs, Bowie State and Howard. Though experienced in life, I learned my history through academia and gained a greater sense of pride in my past and more hope for my future.”
Related* “Army Memorial Service: Tikrit” by Gordon Kippola * “Pancakes” by Richard Krohn * “For Ahmaud Arbery, an Unarmed Black Jogger Killed for Allegedly Looking in the Window of a House Under Construction” by Michael Meyerhofer
Christine Potter
CLOSE CALL
I’m still not sure I really saw the car—shiny redon a day that was a long green nap—go airborne.I saw the utility pole it had hit tremble—testingitself against electric wires that couldn’t catch it—and fall. But the car was surely on its roof andbeyond it the reservoir was lovely as that word’ssound, and full of springtime rain. And past that,long suburban lawns, eighty different shades ofgreen, green that owned itself so proudly you’dneed a Geiger counter to say how green: crazy, aneon green, Kelly green, green like tomato vinesabout to blossom and bear fruit. So I called 911.My husband got us parked and ran across thestreet to the kid in the upside-down red car, whowe both thought must be dead. And who seemedprofoundly still but moved his hands to put themboth over his face. It was raining again by then,tiny drops you couldn’t see, and there were wiresdown on the wet pavement. The cop who helpedthe kid stand up and walk to the ambulance thatarrived told us he heard those wires singing. We’dknown they must be live. I’m old, my husband too.The measure of our lives stretches out like a sillyaccordion. We understand any number of dangers,often read the papers to find out about them. Westep carefully in these day-long dusks, this sugary, constant May rain. But I think our country is stilla garden. Look, irises snap their purple fingers oncreek banks; somehow, kids flip their cars and live.And somehow the wires are still singing with news.—from Poets Respond
May 19, 2024
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Christine Potter: “I have been especially disheartened by the news lately—and it’s hard to pin it down to just one story. The war in Ukraine is going poorly. But the New York Times Magazine story about extremist Israeli settlers twisted my gut the hardest; I’m a New Yorker with lots of Jewish friends, and I used to work for a school with a branch in Tel Aviv. I love Jewish people, but I see the brutal actions of the far-right Israeli government echoed in the far right here in America, who I fear would be equally violent, given the chance. I support the kids protesting on college campuses but worry about the consequences on the Presidential election in the fall. And then yesterday, my husband and I were driving to the local bakery when we ended up about half a minute behind a young man flipping his car. But everyone survived! I believe in American democracy more than most things. I hope for the best for my country, too.” (web)
Related* “I Want to Love the World” by Christine Potter * “On the Election” by Christine Potter * “Revenge” by Christine Potter
Michael Hettich
THE WILD ANIMAL
They knock over everything, boys and girls,hardly more than instruments waiting to be played;hardly more than rivers waiting to be navigated,waiting to be damned; hardly more than songswaiting for their harmony; hardly more than eyes.I lived inside the hope of rain, she says. I lived insidethe gesture of a fisherman casting out his line.The bait was still alive and swam frantically and bledas the tide reached its arms out and gathered up the seaweedfilled with tiny creatures and stories of the depth of thingswhere you and the other world, the one without endwithout end became mesmerized, covered in a pelt of furno one had a name for. So they called you Wild Animaland wondered what you’d do now, how you’d manage to survive,and they watched you carefully, and they gave you fancy namesin an otherwise forgotten language, as they tracked your slow demiseotherwise known as extinction.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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Michael Hettich: “‘The Wild Animal’ comes out of a project I worked on during the summer of 2008, in which I made myself write at least one ‘poem’ every day and I didn’t allow myself to look back or revise until I had reached 200. The hope was to discover a way to go beyond my long-practiced techniques of revision, to get beyond certain habits of mind that felt limiting. I’ve saved approximately 60 of these pieces, of which ‘The Wild Animal’ is one.” (web)
Related* “The Lesson” by Michael Hettich * “A Certain Childhood” by Michael Hettich * “The End of the Old Woman” by Michael Fulop
Charlotte Innes
SLOW WALK
I take my father’s arm. We are about to embark on a long journeyacross the lawn.From hydrangea curling around the back doorto a Norway maple at the final edge.Thirty-five yards. And thenthirty-five yards back again.It takes an hour.Each time I visit, I insist we walk,some vague idea I have to keep him fit.He’s always game, although the distance lessens.Now, at ninety-seven,he totters along with his two walking sticks,refusing a walker, veering slightly left. I tug him gently back on track.Alzheimer’s clouds his brain.My goal is to have a talk as best we can.I didn’t know that this was to be our last.And I don’t remember much, except when I asked if he recalled where he grew up, he answered promptly, 16 Hittorfstrasse! with the triumphant look of a student who knows he got it right. No signthat this was a place he was forced to flee.England welcomed him and that’s where he wants to be.Five months later, I’m on the plane.He fell downstairs, filling his brain with blood.They say he won’t last long, but he toughs it out for four more days. At 10 p.m., my stepmother gets a call.We go to see him one last time.His mouth is open wide like a baby bird’sbut he looks easy. The old traveler, almost ready for his final journey.And how my father loved to travel. Summers, we camped in Europe’s outer reaches, Dubrovnik, Slovakia, Greece—though never fascist Spain.We skied in Scotland, climbed in Wales,hiked by the River Dove, the moors on Kinder Scout.But he loved to be home. My stepmother had engraved on his headstone,a granite rock from the local quarry,the final line of Tennyson’s Ulysses: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Everything else, the difficult past, my angry years, the years we didn’t talk—my family’s good at that—it all recedes,dwindles down to the moment whenhe heard my question, answered right,pleased with himself, pleased with me.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Charlotte Innes: “More and more, as I get older, almost every change seems like a loss, until I make a poem out of it. And then, bingo! Whatever the mood of the poem, angry or exultant, I’m out of jail. For a while, at least. Why? I don’t know. I suppose I’ll just have to keep writing.”
Related* “The Ex” by Charlotte Innes * “Little Movies” by David Kirby * “Our First Five Days in the Country” by Joan Murray
George Bilgere
INSULT TO INJURY
I find an old air gunand a can of ammodown in the basementin a cardboard moving box,along with some other stuff,flotsam from previous lives.A teenager, a long-expiredme, used it to polish off tins cans in the backyard,and once a bright, golden oriole, shot in mid-song, blowing a hole through meas it fell. Holding a pistol is like shaking handswith death. What the hell, let’s see if the damn thing still works. In the same box,a volume of poetry, slim,but not slim enough,by a poet I never liked—all smoke and mirrors—a poet utterly, brutally forgotten, although a blurb on the back still calls his book“an astonishing debut.” I prop it against the wall,pump, load, cock, and Blamgoes the gun as it hasn’tin half-a-century. I inspect the astonishing debut. The pellet, as it happens,made it farther than I ever did, stopping on page sixty-two, just deep enough to dimple,not tear, a sonnet on the guy’sdivorce, how his wife ran off with his best friend, how terrible the betrayal, how deep his grief.How losing her tore out his soul.And now this.—from Cheap Motels of My Youth
2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
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George Bilgere: “When I was eight years old my parents got divorced. My mother packed her three kids into an old Chevy station wagon and drove us from St. Louis to Riverside, California, looking for a fresh start. She had visited there when she was an Army nurse stationed in LA during the war and fell in love with the place. That cross-country car trip, full of cheap diners, cheap hotels, and desperation, changed my life. I fell in love with the vastness and beauty, the glamor and tawdriness, of America. I’ve travelled all over the country since then, on that ancient and deeply American quest, the search for home.” (web)
Related* “Misting” by George Bilgere * “Chernobyl” by George Bilgere * “Abandoned Bicycle” by George Bilgere
Jane Hirshfield
WETNESS: AN ASSAY
Take a square, a circle.Flip it over, ask it to rotate: its face stays the same.An isosceles triangle doesn’t choose which of its sides.A blinking light declares the whole night its far-off mountain.A person, tilted a single degree,knows their life altered.Ever after, knows themselves guest in their own house.Sometimes you see rain first, sometimes you hear it.Wind doesn’t come from all directions at once.But anywhere rain is, that place is wet.Wetness: knowledge of pelt, of hide, of skin.Dear, ungovernable, shivering.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Jane Hirshfield: “I first wrote a poem and subtitled it ‘an assay,’ in 2002. I thought it was a one-time event. That poem needed, I felt, some explanation for its unusual gait, its mode of thinking by almost prose-like propositions. I came to the term through both the assaying machines of science, which disassemble a substance into its component parts, and the French essayer, the sense of an experimental ‘try’ that lies also behind the word for ‘essay,’ a form that thinks its way through its subject in often-meandering but still measured and measuring ways … ‘Wetness: An Assay’ is a loose embodiment of this form I’ve worked in for what’s now been over twenty years—but the poem gained something for me when I tried on this title. Its stanzas do feel to me a series of small tries. It wants to discover something about what it is to be an abstraction, what it is to be a perceived and perceiving light in the large dark, and finally what it is to be a person: susceptible to shifting and unpredictable experience, vulnerable to everything around us, sometimes soaked through to the skin—and finding that soaked state beloved.”
Related* “Those Who Cannot Act” by Jane Hirshfield * A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield * “In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit” by Catherine Freeling
Craig van Rooyen
THE MINSTREL CYCLE
is a group bike ride involving guys in tight pantsand floppy hats with feathers, I tell my daughter.They play flutes and lutes and flageoletsand recite poetry while they pedal.She asked—shyly passing a note in her 2nd grade script.I didn’t misspell anything. Plus what am I supposed to sayabout training bras and tampons—still years away?OK, for reals, I say, lying next to her in the dark:There’s a whole frickin’ peloton of these guys.They decorate their bicycles with cowslips, primrose,foxglove flowers. They ride (no hands) into townwith the breeze on a warm summer evening.And the frogs and crickets go quiet just to listento them tell knock knock jokes. They ride in circlesaround the Mission square, long hair blowing back.There will be time enough for the rest. To tell her the partabout how they stop their bikes and pull outtheir horns. There will be time for her to hear the music—how they play the sound of summer—the heat of it,the ice-cream sundae smell of it; how they playsun on wild rye, barefoot prints in the key of oak treeshade—how they play it lazy like a shallow creekon Mississippi mud; how they play it quicklike a lizard tongue or thumping like a dog’s tail.There will be time for her to hear them play it loudlike the Fourth of July then gentle like a mama duck.And when the sun is down and the bats come out—specks in a darkening glass—she will hear them play“We’ve Got All The Time in The World,” and knowthat they are lying—lying in their floppy hats,lying in their funny pants, lying with every last breaththey let out of those beautiful sad horns.—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Craig van Rooyen: “One of my biggest faults is avoiding hard conversations. Among other things, writing poetry is a way to trick myself into saying things I would not otherwise say and knowing things I would not otherwise know.”
Related* “Siege Machinery” by Craig van Rooyen * “Reading Exodus” by Craig van Rooyen * “How to Swim an Elegy” by Craig van Rooyen
Chloe Ortiz (age 14)
CONFIDING WITH A HEN
I tell her the rye truth. We sit in the morning, dew the soil staining. She cocks her head, I can tell she is listening. Her small eyes fill with tilled earth. When I leave, she pecks the ground, searching. —from 2014 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Chloe Ortiz: “I like to write poetry because when I read a good poem, it makes me feel good and I smile. I would like to make other people feel good too.”
Related* “Twine: A Prayer” by Chloe Ortiz * “Cultured” by Chloe Lin * “A City” by Kofi Edufo
Nancy Miller Gomez
RESURRECTION
When I was five my brother convinced me to perform mouth to mouth on a catfish floating belly up in the scum that gathered in the lake behind our house. He said I had the power to bring it back, though it was my choice. I followed his directions, leaned over the dock, pressed my lips against the stiff ridge of its mouth (while keeping its bloated body submerged beneath the oily sheen) and began to breathe in and out as I opened and closed the bony folds of its gills. At first, my brother held my ankles, to steady me so I wouldn’t fall off the dock. I kept breathing in through my nose—sting of creosote and pond rot— and out through my mouth—a soft exhale of prayer. You already know I did not bring the fish back to life, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. I kept breathing into that dark opening long after my brother said to quit, long after he got bored and wandered off, and the setting sun bathed the brackish water in gold. I kept breathing in and out, long after the night cooled, and the stars rose, and my mother found me asleep on the dock, her voice calling me back from that place, where the fish turned its rapturous eyes away from the moon, and dove back to its sanctuary of darkness.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Nancy Miller Gomez: “My childhood home was on a small lake in Kansas. I spent many happy hours there fishing with my brother. But I was terrified of the catfish. They looked like nightmares dredged up from a bad dream with their slimy, mottled skin, wide-set, gelatinous eyes, mouths open and groping and all those tentacle-like whiskers. I don’t know if my brother ever convinced me I could bring a dead thing back to life. Perhaps I have mis-remembered it. But ‘Resurrection’ is an attempt to capture my child-desire to believe in myself.” (web)
Related* “Deadbeat” by Nancy Miller Gomez * “Supernova” by Nancy Miller Gomez * “How Are We Doing?” by Nancy Miller Gomez
Marianne Kunkel
I GUESS
Right after my parents’ divorce, people blurted the single question they’d been dying to ask for years. How’d they last a day? Great sex, I was tempted to respond, as if the thought of my sour mother fondling my father’s new rebellion, a ponytail, wasn’t joke enough. I guess long ago they made each other happy. What a sad thing to have to guess. Once my mother spoke of a nightmare in which she walked to our front door; in pitch dark, she twisted the knob and a hand from outside twisted back. I imagine if I shined a flashlight on that intruder’s face, I’d see my ever-frustrated father. Proximity without loving was their creed, him plucking a guitar in a room off the kitchen, her clicking a noisy blender on, and so I couldn’t believe it when my father said Enough after all those nights he laid in their waterbed, flirting with escape but drifting nowhere. —from Rattle #44, Summer 2014
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Marianne Kunkel: “My high school English teacher dropped a Marianne Moore poem on my desk after class one day. At the time I liked reading poetry, but it took realizing I shared a name with a famous poet for me to see myself in it. I started writing.” (web)
Related* “Reverence” by Marianne Kunkel * “A Sloth First Hears Its Name” by Marianne Kunkel * “When Our Parents Fight” by Jared Harel
Nancy Miller Gomez
HOW TO FORGET
I am lining my memories up against the wall.They are begging me for reprieve. Here is the night I found you on the floor, folded like laundry. Here are the bloody towels,the smell of ammonia and rotting fruit.Once I was a wife. NowI am a wilderness. I am the groveof aspens. All that’s left of youare candle stubs and carpet stains.All your goodbyes have turned into horses.They are grazing peacefully. Your wordsare blades of grass, our last argumenta pasture dotted with poppies.That night I watched you wash your bruised hands in the sink. Now, I see two fish diving into a stream. I am re-remembering the last timewe spoke. I have turned it into a holiday,marked it on the calendar with an asterisk. A day to eat cake.A day to enter the cellar and retrieve the special vintage with its sweet notes of smoke and honey. Lush on the tongue. Easy to swallow. The golden crowned sparrows have returned from their long summersinging of loss. Three notes. One for the knife, one for the cut, one for all I have forgotten.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Nancy Miller Gomez: “‘How to Forget’ grew out of a thought exercise where the narrator is lining her memories up and making choices about which ones to kill off, and which ones to keep and reshape.” (web)
Related* “Punishment” by Nancy Miller Gomez * “Growing Apples” by Nancy Miller Gomez * “Still” by Nancy Miller Gomez
James Washington Jr.
CREDIT
As son & mother.Welfare.State surplus peanut butter, cheese, & smilesfor Mr. Sullivan’s monthly inspection to certify our poverty. Our couch couldn’t stand by itself, all lopsided on prosthetic legs:The Yellow Pages,upside-down cast iron fry pan,cushions ravishedraw to cotton entrails.Mr. Sullivan made it look hard, whether we even needed a cheap new sofa, while I, taught to please, complimented his same-same tie, offered him water, respectful, “Sir.” Mother of a million thanks, thespian.& Mr. Sullivan nodded fedora, as if high courtesy.You’re a credit to your race!He said to me,& decades later, still stuck in my throat,thicker even than bitter government peanut butter & cheese.—from Prompt Poem of the Month
April 2024
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Prompt: Write a poem with a single word as the title, in which
our understanding of that word shifts by the end of the poem.Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “The brilliant economy of language in ‘Credit’ helps this poem knock on our door with authenticity. James further weaves us into the narrative with bold images, such as the upside down Yellow Pages and the cotton entrails of the cushions. When the dialogue hits and is allowed to hang in the air without much exposition, we too feel the slap, which reverberates with the transformative title.”
Related* “The Purse” by Stephanie A. Hart * “Six Senryu from the Kitchen” by Sharon Ferrante * “The Librarian and the Sullen Blank Paper” by Martin Willitts Jr.
Tony Gloeggler
ALL OF THEM
Down Syndrome Larry, my favoriteguy in the residence, the perfectblend of Pillsbury Dough Boyand Charlie Chaplin, all gap toothedgrins, warm cuddles and charmbowing to kiss my aunt’s handwhen she gave him a silver dollarthe Christmas I brought him home,pirouetting anytime a pretty girlwalked by on Smith Street. Makingfaces, silly sounds for store owners,the free zeppoles, black and whitecookies, Italian ices rolled in. Robert,nicknamed Notre Dame afterthe hunchback, bouncing alonglike a string puppet and smilingconstantly, saying hello to everyone,thank you, whenever someonedid anything, answering yesto every question posed his way,always got extra help, the mostattention from new workers. Others,like Jimmy, never had a chance.Hulking, plodding and droolinglike a fountain that never grantedanyone’s wishes, grabbing your arm,only letting go after a tug of war,his spit drying on you, stinkingthe rest of the day. Still, Ethel,Jose, Riviezzio loved him bestwhile I shook my head, baffled.Be careful with James, the silenttype going about his business, bigand powerful, quietly creatingcollages or scrolling on his iPad,sweeping the floor, doing laundry,emptying the garbage. Easy to forgetthe times he exploded, overturninghis desk, the refrigerator, hurlingutensils at the ceiling lights, crackinghis teeth chewing on the area rugin a rage. Still, he was the topdraft choice whenever anyonewanted Dunkin’ Donuts, a sodafrom the corner bodega, or tooka ride to fill up the van, pick upprescriptions, the perfect guyto sit shotgun, tap along to whoever’sfavorite station, carrying packagesand opening doors. Then there’s John.Visitors, acquaintances love him.He remembers everyone’s name,smiles all the time, makes cocktailconversation like he’s runningfor office, never admits he hada bad day, takes five minutesto ask a question, twice as longto make a decision. Sometimes,I get so bored with him I needto scream. I’m tempted to tell himto shut the fuck up, never cometo my office except in an emergencyuntil I remember the time I stoodat the top of the staircase, heard himgrumble his way down about allthe fucking bullshit he puts up withevery damn day, that fucking Tonybreaking his balls. All of them. Likeme and you, like everyone we know.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Tony Gloeggler: “I started writing poetry because I was always pretty quiet and no one was really talking about things I was feeling and thinking. Trying to turn my thoughts into a poem helped me understand myself and how I fit and didn’t fit in the world. That’s still what I’m doing whenever I write. This one’s about the guys in the group home I managed (the place I fit best, where things made the most sense) and how so few people outside the residence viewed them like they viewed anyone else, how they’re mostly just like everybody else. A little nicer or nuttier, funnier, weirder, less guarded. How a couple of them are two of my favorite people ever, how they could sometimes annoy the crap out of me. And how I miss them (apologies to Lee and Florencio for not letting them in the poem but luckily they don’t read poetry just like nearly everybody else) and the staff. Especially Larry.” (web)
Related* “Goy” by Tony Gloeggler * “2B” by Tony Gloeggler * “1969” by Tony Gloeggler
John Arthur
I REACHED OUT AND AM AWAITING A RESPONSE
I’m the Lebron James of local bureaucrats. Give me a project and I’ll manage it step by step like a PMP using the waterfall method. I’m shooting eighty-three percent with these crumpled up reports, my desk as a backboard for this waste paper basket. I’ve got ninety-nine passwords stored in my head and I can estimate the total square footage of a building with just one glance. I rotate the same two pairs of pants.And once per year when I go to FranceI refuse to check my email. Someone else can pick up the refuse.I’m just eating snails and strolling Montmarte buying street art which I’ll hang from the walls of my cubicle in city hallhoping someone will ask where I found it but no one ever does and look, it’s not that I’m trying to stall it’s just for each decision I’ve gotta call a committee. This shit is still a democracy even when the ballots are clouded with Meta’s pixelated prop gun smoke and I denote I shall not poke the sleeping commissioner who right now is bumbling through a speech written by a Rutgers college intern who uses AI to craft policy briefs in their briefs and listen, everyone knows New Jersey spends the most per square mile on repaving its roads. Pot holes like pock marks on my face. With legal pot to fill any shortfallsin our budgets which barely budgeeven when everyone’s taxes go up faster than a luxury apartment complex.And before nodding out I hear your voice again and again saying Yes, please hold,I’ll transfer you now. —from Poets Respond
May 5, 2024
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John Arthur: “The Lakers lost in the NBA playoffs and my news feeds have been inundated with debate over whether Lebron James is the greatest basketball player of all time or whether it’s Michael Jordan. That prompted the ‘I’m the Lebron James of local bureaucrats’ opening, and the rest of the poem just came out basically as is. By the way, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the greatest of all time.”
Related* “Sad Robots” by James Arthur * “Major Tom Turns into Light” by Colin Pope * “Gravity in Jerusalem” by Arthur Russell
Lynne Thompson
PSALM FOR WORKING WOMEN
A microwave is my savior; I shall not starve.It alloweth me to eat quickly. It leadeth meto purchase Stouffers in bulk.It restoreth dehydrated onions. It delivers mefrom pre-heating for pre-heating’s sake.Yea, though I walk through the valleyof canned goods, I shall fear no tin containersfor plastics art with me and glass and ceramics,they comfort me.It preparest a roast turkey in thirty-six minutes;four for carrots when they’re ’waved on HIGH.My rumaki comes out crisp.Surely, defrosting and warming shall follow meall the days of my life and I shall dwellin the land of a Hotpoint forever.—from Rattle #23, Summer 2009
Tribute to Lawyer Poets
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Lynne Thompson: “Although I was a civil litigator for more than fourteen years, the practice of law seldom, if ever, enters my poems. It’s as though that person has gone off for a long (and well-deserved) sleep and this poet—always bemused—has taken her place. I like her.” (web)
Related* “Sonnet Consisting of One Law” by Lynne Thompson * “Bootleg Fire” by Lynne Thompson * “Lament: I Am Implication” by Lynne Thompson
Judith Fox
HOW IT HAPPENED
I thought I’d be at his side when he died.Didn’t think I’d find his body,relied on the clinicianwho said his cancer will take timeto spread. But death struck my husbandwith a lizard-quick tongue.Snatched him as he was reading,a torn theater stub tucked between pagesmarking his place.I was washing dishes a room away—a thin wallapart—belting out songsI’ll never sing again. Believing we had months,thinking there was time enoughto dry a second cup.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Judith Fox: “I wrote nonfiction articles for national magazines, but didn’t start studying and writing poetry seriously until the spare text I wrote for my photography book, I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s rekindled my life-long love of poetry. (My father gave me A Child’s Garden of Verses on my fifth birthday; don’t ask me to recite ‘My Shadow’ unless you really want to hear it.) I’m twice-widowed and live in Los Angeles.” (web)
Related* “A Little Sermon” by Judith Tate O’Brien * “Girl Is Glued to Door” by William Ross * “Image of a Woman Along a Sidewalk” by Jason Brunner
Tim Suermondt
GRADUATION
All the things the young will do and seethat I never will.All the things I’ve seen and donethat they never will—the trade-offseems fair.I walk down the block,the elms lined uplike they are on inspection—“Those shoes need more shine,Suermondt,” the sun hangingover my shoulder as if it cares.—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
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Tim Suermondt: “The day after a February snow storm the sun came out, and I watched a group of high school students standing on the street corner, all of whom would soon have to face ‘the real world’ and all that that entailed. And despite the years between us, I felt like those teenagers: ready to go—damn the disappointments and worse. And like me, they’d learn to hang in and even occasionally triumph.” (web)
Related* “The Valid Clumsiness of Roses” by Tim Suermondt * “Even Rottweilers Sing” by Tim Amsden * “Neolithic Burial” by Tim Myers
Luigi Coppola
A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BUYING A HOME
- Decide if buying a home is right for youTomorrow morning, wake at dawn and look up at the skyconsider if it might fall, crack open and/or turnand whether you ever want to see it again.2. Decide if you should sell firstIn your head, price tag your belongings, weigh upthe weights in your life and wait to see if they add upto a mass that has value, a total that others would want.3. Decide on your budgetIs that total, the sum of your life’s worth anythingto anyone? Does it hold up to your self-worthand is it worth more or less than your intangible parts?4. Get your finances in placeStack coins in order of cleanliness,notes in order of softnesscheques in order of love.5. Decide where you want to liveCompare the surface of the sun with the moon,dredge up the pond and place the fish on the line,breathe in the air from every continent before dying.6. Choose a specific propertyMake sure to lick each brick and twang the aerial,consider the lives that have passed by and if they lookedin the window, imagined themselves living in the living room.7. Make an offer – and get it acceptedOffer skin, offer tea cosies, offer light,offer the tie around your neck, offer offal,offer more than you have by one single petal.8. Arrange a mortgageTurn left at the hospital, go past the charity shop,turn right at the pharmacist, round the back of the library,opposite the primary school—there you’ll find the devil’s door.9. Hire a solicitor or conveyancerFile down a lucky coin and drag it along your palm,let the blood settle on tissue paper, the ironand fibres embracing on their desk.10. Decide if you want a surveySee! The cracks! Hear! The mice!Smell! The damp! Taste! The dust!Touch! The emptiness in every room!11. Arrange a depositGather your friends and family, sit themaround a fire, build that fire to the tallest treeand ask them to collect every ash flake.12. Exchange contractsEyes – Fish Tank – Rollerblades – Steak – Cape – Hatred – Job – Subordinates – Balaklava –Cocktails – Horses (contracts exchanged)13. Final arrangements and negotiationsI was engaged at four to my mother’s hairdresser’sdaughter. I can still feel her tiny hand in my minebut I can’t remember her name.14. Complete the saleShake hands across the threshold, make eyecontact for a second too long, make this uncomfortabilitypart of the process, remember their joyful regret.15. Take possession of your new homeLock the door, lie on the floor, stare at the ceiling,the new plaster sky that is yours to paint anewand a future you will make from someone else’s past.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Luigi Coppola: “While unpacking some (decade old?) boxes since our last house move (the scene from The Incredibles springs to mind), I was inspired by the title and headings used for an article from the HomeOwners Alliance website to write about the process, the headaches, the joy of a new house and then home. Various memories came flooding back, from childhood to adulthood, all compartmentalised but through various literal/metaphoric/symbolic lens, recalling Marianne Moore’s ars poetica within the longer version of her poem ‘Poetry’: ‘imaginary gardens with real toads.’” (web)
Related* “My Mother Was a Dancer and She Never Looked Back” by Luigi Coppola * “My Animal Understudy Replaced Me in the School Production of The Tempest” by Luigi Coppola * “Find” by Luigi Coppola
Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “Synapses and Stardust” was written by Brandy Norrbom for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Brandy Norrbom
SYNAPSES AND STARDUST
Six times you were cosmic dust in the universeBut this time you called me sanctuary runningLines through the sand like bio-electricity the Spaces between us humming like synapses youSet us apart like monoliths in the desert sky allScratching shadows where the dark in me isPulling every state of was or being into theUndertow of this magnetic rift and yes it’sPolarized but so are the tides and the moonMaking us as orbital as all that other matterCan we fold into and around each other aTesseract through time where every instanceOf you finds every instance of me?—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the idea of the ‘spaces between us humming like synapses,’ and the way one can almost sense that kind of electricity between the objects in this image. The thoughtful lack of punctuation makes the poem flow as if it’s all being said in one breath, which reflects the ‘suspended in space and time’ feeling of the artwork. The last two lines are beautiful and moving, and take the reader by surprise with their candid vulnerability. The ending seems to hang in the air after the poem is over, again perfectly mirroring the scene in the image.”
Related* “The Space Between” by Amelie Flagler * “The Widower” by Nick Bertelson * “Rain” (Haiku) by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco
Amy Chan
MY MOTHER SAYS
My mother says I sing like a birdon a winter’s day,my mother, whose grace catches,light on water,on her changing face.But if I am the bird and she the sea, I sing because she flows through me.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Amy Chan: “Adrienne Rich writes that poetry (art, really) ‘ask[s] of us a grace in what we bear.’ That sums it up quite nicely for me—I write poems to find ‘grace in what we bear.’”
Related* “Mother, Mother Ocean” by Kelly Grace Thomas * “An Editor Advised Me to Stop Writing Mother Bird Poems” by Jennifer Givhan * “Church Bulletin” by Amy Plettner
Dmitry Blizniuk
translate me render me into the martian tongueacross the black nightwhere the gun stock reaches the star.beheaded houses hum in the gloom.the neck vertebra of the torn staircases are exposed.moonlight is bitter like the sap of killwort.Lord translate my words.we have not been born yet, but died already.the evil sorcerer in his bunker gave the orderto annihilate all Ukrainians.to burn all forms of memory. of life.he poured a bucketful of flash drives into a bonfire.our days are melting in the flames.masses of memories of the universe.I was young and once in a village I went divinginto the river after a running start.rebar rods stood hidden underwater.sharp rusted spikes.the wooden fishing dock rotted away long ago.for hours I chucked myself into the black river. in the morning girl look here—you are covered with scratches.on the legs, stomach, arms. I was insanely lucky back then.will I be lucky this day?readers-refugees.we pick the books off the shelves and knockat every book’s cover. the classics.let us into your paper worlds. ray bradbury, sholokhov, leo tolstoy.but no matter where I poke, it’s all For Thee the Bell Tolls.I end up in War and insane Peace.in Slaughterhouse-Number.now the reality of our life isValley of the Red Data Book.now every city is servedthe cocktail Bloody Vlad.crimson yolks float in dense murk over the booze of events.bombs gnaw at houses, schools, kindergartens, hospitals,churches. we are being freed of freedom and of lives.the howling of sirens glides forebodingair raid alarm—here comes flyinga purple swan with his head ripped away. the dawn—a gray-blue bigheaded infant resembling a shrimp.labored breathing. pneumonia.because of nights in a basementa baby bird of mucus made its nest in the lungs. yet another artillery barrage.a rocket blasted an apartment in a skyscraper. a conflagration.devil’s retrospective.mom and the elder sister in the kitchenare killed instantly by the explosion. black thick smoke pours out of the corridor. billows. burns a child’s eyes. it’s not smoke-like, but black cotton candy. the cat named Buttercup is the first to tumble down to the asphaltfrom the seventh-story window ledge. thirteen-year old Misha follows him, leaps like a kittenonto the enormous spire poplar—planted three meters away from the balcony.dry, slender branches break beneath the small body.crackle.it’s as if he is falling into an empty well, inside itsprouts a stinging biting tree.the boy Misha finds a wayto snag his elbow on a thick branchat the third-story level.his ribs and left wrist are broken, but he’s alive. he faints. translated, rendered safe.people in the apartments.butterflies under broken glass panes—apollo, sailor. swallowtail, morpho menelaus—with shrapnel-pins in their velvety backsslowly, slowlythey lift off from the earth.they rise together with the cement boxes. but that’s impossible. the butterfly collector is surprised.how many more people will perish,how many more worlds will vanish unexplored,unnoticed. just like that.by the sorcerous wish of the kremlin maniac.Kharkiv 451.two fire engines are already on the way. carving corners an ambulance arrives at the entrance.imperturbable medical angels.dark-red scrubs. kevlars.next to the car the catdrags his back paws. crawlstowards the poplar. lifts his snout. screams horribly. and the ambulance driver notices stuck in the crowna child. no stranger will save the peoplethe close ones and the distant onesexcept us ourselves.that’s why the boy Misha absolutely must survive. that’s why we will win.
Translated from Russian by Yana Kane, edited by Bruce Esrig
—from Poets Respond
April 28, 2024
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Note from the translator Yana Kane: “Week after week, month after month, year after year I hear about Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine. Kharkiv is the city that has been subjected to especially vicious bombings. Yet each time the citizens of Ukraine, the citizens of Kharkiv respond with resilience and courage; each time they push back the darkness with their love of life. One of the ways I express my solidarity with them is by translating contemporary poetry written by Ukrainian authors. Dmitry Blizniuk is a Kharkiv poet who chronicles his city’s suffering and the indomitable spirit. Note that ‘we are being freed of freedom and our lives’ is a reference to Putin’s claim that he started the war in order to defend the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine against the discrimination by the Ukrainian government.”
Related* “Walls Trembling Like Horses” by Dmitry Blizniuk * “Listening to Mars,” by Sally Ashton * “The Action Star Unscripted” by Jocko Benoit
Hayden Saunier
THE ONE AND THE OTHER
The child hums as he carries, too late,his grandmother’s sugar-dusted lemon-glazed cakedown the street to the neighbor who needs to be cheered,too late for the neighborwho’s stepped into the airof her silent front hall from a ladder-backed chairher church dress just pressed, her head in a loop she tiedinto the clothesline, too latehe unlatches the gate,walks up the brick walk on his tiptoes, avoiding the crackstoward the door she unlocked, left ajar, who knows whyor for whom, if on purposeor not, but because he’s too lateshe’s gone still when he reaches the door and becausehe’s too late, as he calls out and looks, brilliant sunburns through hazepours through sidelights and bevelsthrough chandelier prisms, strikes white sparks and purpleson ceiling and walls, on the overturned chair, on her stockingsher brown and whitespectator shoes on the floorand because he’s too late he remembers both terror and beautybut not which came first. But enough of the onethat he ranand enough of the otherto carefully lay down the cake at her feet.—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
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Hayden Saunier: “I love the way objects and people and ideas find their way together in a poem. An old friend sent me an outrageous pound cake at Christmas and when I described it as sugar-dusted, lemon-glazed, the story of the boy in this poem, told to me years ago, came straight to my mind and stayed there. It was all in the cake: that sunny yellow circle with its center missing, dense, empty, bitter, sweet, the gestures we make too late, the child’s ability to take in everything at the same moment, at once and complete: It was all in the cake.” (web)
Related* 2011 Rattle Poetry Prize Winner * “Self-Portrait with the Smithfield Ham …” by Hayden Saunier * “Hard Facts 3 (Do Not Resist)” by Hayden Saunier
Erik Campbell
JUST IN CASE YOU SHOULD MEET ME ON THE STREET
It’s come to this. Since last February I haven’ttouched you or anyone, save for my mechanic,but that was by accident and in March and itwas only a handshake because I forgot he couldkill me without meaning to and, besides, I’ve knownhim since junior high school. These days, I takea couple of aspirin every morning just for goodluck. I go for one walk, sometimes two, daily,just for research’s sake. Just to see, like somecrystalline anthropologist from the future, ifthe present is like I imagine it or remember itfrom my incessant apartment. I won’t come home(sometimes I have to walk for miles. Once, a wholeday) until I’m convinced I’m not some simulacrum(“Please, dog,” I’ve said aloud on walks, “bite my leg,go for it. I need evidence”), part of some teenager’savatar on a campaign, wandering in the desert, bankingon the biblical: that doing so leads to the promised land,or at least someplace worth selling or invading. So,should I meet you on the street, after all of this (and “if”)is over, and I hug you, I’ll not only be doing so too hard;I will be trying to crush you before you can leave me again.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Erik Campbell: “I wrote the attached because I wanted to feel more alive and consequential than I have in ages.”
Related* “This Small Thing” by Erik Campbell * “Anniversary” by Erik Campbell * “The Man Kissed the Letter” by Erik Campbell
Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “The Space Between” was written by Amelie Flagler for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Amelie Flagler
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Perhaps equidistance is a secret to be explored.I suggest it’s not something, I believe it’s not nothing,But a perfect illusion of what comes in between.The things that we miss at the height of a scene.Not as grand as the sky, or as low as the sands,The air that’s unnoticed as it flows through the lands,The blank space.The missed place.The dirt between home and first base.So the zone between up and down lies still,Forever ignored by the human’s will,Floating and frozen, barely windblown,Unmoving, unrecognized, encaptured in stone.We continue our lives, always looking around,Condoning our nature to miss middle-ground.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, John Paul Caponigro: “‘The Space Between’ engages the art directly, transcending mere description, surprisingly and insightfully noting what often goes unnoticed. Never departing from the original source, the observations it shares feel both personal and universal, reminding us of truths we already know but often forget. I feel I learned something while reading this poem written in response to my art; something that was intuitively felt became consciously clearer.”
Related* “Wildflowers” by Paul T. Corrigan * “Identity Politics” by Drea * “Homemaker” by Mary Meriam
Ruth Bavetta
THE NEW BATTERY SHOULD COME TOMORROW
Got up this morning thinking about going to see my daughter.Which led to thinking about the remote for the garage door opener which had stopped working when I replaced the battery.Which led to searching online for garage door repairmen. Which led towanting to check the remote again before I called a repairman.Which led to getting dressed so I could go outside. Which led to remembering to brush my teeth. Which led to discovering my Waterpik wasn’t working. Which led to researching online to find out what the problem could be. Which led toscrabbling around to find the extra tips that came with the Waterpik and figuring out which was which and how to replace the tip. So with Waterpik repaired I went outside and tried againto make the garage door opener work. Which led tomy discovering that the little red light in the remote wasn’t on. Which led me to fiddle with the batteries again. Which led to my discovering I had ordered the wrong battery for it. Which led to a protracted Amazon session looking for the proper battery and figuring out which were in stock and would come soonand didn’t come only in a pack of fifty. So now I’m exhausted and I’m not going anywhere. —from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Ruth Bavetta: “I write at a messy desk overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Once, it was important to me to make sense of life. Now, I’m convinced that there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where the poetry comes from. This poem is pretty much an accurate report of an actual morning a couple of years ago. This kind of thing happens with increasing frequency as we age. What can we do but laugh about it?” (web)
Related* “Heat” by Ruth Bavetta * “Elegy for My 1958 Volkswagen” by Ruth Bavetta * “The End and the Aim” by Ruth Bavetta
Kenny Williams
THE RETURN
When I returned to earth after forty thousand yearsthere were no more graves, no more cathedrals.No public parks, no public. I looked everywhereand couldn’t find a single statue of a hero put upby a committee. There was simply none of that sadnessthat can only be satisfied by a dose of dry-eyed Mahler,sex in a sand trap or hunters in the snow. There were,understand, no elevators. There were no jailbirdsto be prayed for, no thieves broken backwardacross the tops of their crosses, no city walls or citadelshung by a thread over the pit of the sky.There had been a Russian documentary filmabout a man gone in search of the birthplace of the wind,but I couldn’t find it. There wasn’t the hospital gardenwhere, one cold Sunday morning, a man came to cut rosesin the face of all prohibitions, posted and implied,for his wife, a girl he’d married ages ago, out of revengeagainst the woman he loved, whose throat he feasted onwhile her husband was in Honolulu with his lover,who was working on her PhD in there’s-nobody-left-to-know-what,probably something to do with marine mammals,not a single specimen of which could I track downto confirm or deny the rose-garden scene in its strangeun-hearable tongue. You must understand:when I returned to earth after forty thousand yearsthere was not one single traffic circle or comic strip,no Lucy diagnosing Charlie Brown or throwingSchroeder’s piano in a tree. No one to take mental noteson how a black-haired bitch handles competition.No competition. No Darwin taking it all backon his deathbed. No rest cures, glory holes, horsefly bites.Not so much as a scrap of Brussels lace I might describein this report, in pointless triumph. Not so muchas a girl dressed like a garden statue, raising a birdcagewith no bird in it, like a lantern in the light of day.In my mind and yours that cage tapers up into a copper nipplewith a ring through it. My friends, hear me when I tell youthere wasn’t so much as a dog to sniff me out.—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012
2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Kenny Williams: “All my poems are about the same thing: human duration, in time, between the Fall and the Last Day. ‘The Return’ seems to be some sort of exception, taking place after the Last Day, though very much shot through with its clarifying light. What’s more, the more I think about it, ‘The Return’ really describes two returns: the return to earth after forty thousand years and the return to report what wasn’t found there. Which of these two returns the title refers to depends, I guess, on the angle from which you read the poem. I’ve always been obsessed with the emptied earth needing a witness to its emptiness, and as I was writing the poem I had to grapple with the complication of that witness’s own need for an audience that would 1) share his frame of Western culture reference and 2) be real. I hold degrees from the University of Virginia and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I own and operate The Fan Sitter, a pet care business, in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia.” (web)
Related* “Rosemary Lamb” by Kenny Williams * “Daphne” by Kenny Williams * “The Hummingbird” by Kenny Williams
Animashaun Ameen
GAY CHICKEN
for b, y, s, and all the boys who knew me first.
We were nine and eleven with no concrete nameto christen the hunger in our loins. Fire,then brimstone: wingless birds impatientto fly the coop. We knew the face of the monsterwaiting patiently under our beds. We knewwhere to find it—how to feed into its fireand touch it in all the right places so it would leaveus be when around the girls. We knew the essenceof music—of wrapping our secrets carefullyaround our fingers and showing them to no onebut ourselves. We were fourteen, and then sixteen,and then a little more alive than any of us could handle.Hushed breaths, then stifled moans. Hungry, and then alive.We played with the fire to the best of our abilities;mastered the mechanics of doors and got betterat hiding this secret of ours: We took this hungerand locked it in—behind the blackboardsat Boys’ Academy. Simpson Street. The dormitory.The one-room apartment in Ilorin so tiny it nearly spilledour secrets. But we locked this madness behindour doors never to be found again. And we livedbecause there was nothing else to do. And we livedbecause there was nothing else we could have donewith the rest of our lives.—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
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Animashaun Ameen: “I am a queer person who comes from a place that is determined to hunt and hurt people like me, and poetry provides me with the means to touch the faces of other boys like me and share my story with them—letting them know they are seen and are not alone in this long journey to becoming.”
Related* “Muscled Loins and Haunches” by Bil Lepp * “What St. Basil Knew” by Basil of Caesarea * “Till She Appeared and the Soul Felt its Worth” by Craig van Rooyen
Chera Hammons
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE BARELY SCRAPING BY
Have you tried paying down the balances of your debts? That’s always the first step to financial freedom. Have you tried having a savings account? Here’s what you do. Start by saving a penny, then double what you save every day. On the second day, set two pennies aside.On the third day, four. Soon you’ll have pennies coming out your ears. Have you tried making more money? Have you tried filling out online surveys in your spare time? Have you tried changing your career? If none of these work for you, there’s always something you have right now that you could live without. Have you tried living in your car? You’ll save on rent. Have you tried not having a car? You’ll save on maintenance.Have you tried not having a cell phone?Connection is a luxury. Have you tried giving up your daily latte? Oh, you don’t have a daily latte? In that case, have you tried not eating out, or in, or around?But don’t forget the importance of self-care. Stress is a killer. Have you tried yoga? Have you tried not being depressed?Have you tried growing an insulating undercoatand becoming an animal?Have you tried running soundlesslythrough the forest unclothed,drinking from chilly mountain streamsand startling at sudden noises?Have you tried lying softly on a bed of moss?Have you tried needing nothing,except what the world gives to you?—from Poets Respond
April 21, 2024
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Chera Hammons: “This week I read that two-thirds of baby boomers, the wealthiest generation, don’t have enough saved for retirement as they reach retirement age (with a quarter having no savings at all). I also saw a story about people who have lost their entire life savings to a wire transfer scam, with no recourse available to them. My internet browser keeps recommending an article to me titled, ‘What to Do if You’re Barely Scraping By Financially.’ These things made me think of all the financial advice I’ve heard before, how it’s so often completely out of touch with reality.” (web)
Related* “The Descent of the Germanwings” by Chera Hammons * “The Moon of a Moon is a Moonmoon” by Chera Hammons * “Anything Worth Saving” by Chera Hammons
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Kelly Grace Thomas
MOTHER, MOTHER OCEAN
Summer never endswithout taking. The basil goneto seed, wildfires swallowthe coast. The morning afterJimmy Buffett dies, my fathersays, Long live the music.It’s 6 a.m., and I’m cryingat the coffee maker. Again.The last days of the summerhave already taken my mother.We sang Floridays at sunsetto send her off. I can still see: beforethe cancer, before California,after the bankruptcy took everythingbut the boat. We sailed south.Wind strumming the sails.Jimmy on the speakers, lookingfor better days, blue skiesand ultraviolet rays. My motherleaning against the hull, twosmall children and a futuretoo heavy to float. Thereisn’t ocean, or family, withoutJimmy. His watery twang. Even afterthe record ends, there is still music.A sea of stingless salt.A mother singing.—from Poets Respond
September 10, 2023
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Kelly Grace Thomas: “Jimmy Buffett meant so much to so many, especially those who loved the water (and a good time). I’m blessed to come from a family of sailors and spent my childhood sailing around Florida, singing to Jimmy’s songs. I cannot recall a memory of the ocean where Jimmy Buffett’s words were not with me. He died Labor Day weekend, the same weekend my mother died two years earlier. Both loved summer and the freedom of saltwater. It seems like neither wanted to see it end. This poem pay tribute to how mothers and music and the sea hold us. The title of this poem is taken from the Jimmy Buffett song, ‘A Pirate Looks at Forty.’” (web)
Related* “And the Women Said” by Kelly Grace Thomas * “After a Long Journey” by Cristi Donoso Best * “At the Border, Late Summer” by Esther Ra
Elizabeth Dozier Moshman (age 5)
MY SCOOTER GOES FAST DOWN THE HILL
and I look at the skyand tree branches.The sun was smilingbut I fell down. I sawthe sky again.—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Elizabeth Dozier Moshman: “I write poems because it feels like it is a miracle.”
Related* “Em Dash” by Katie Dozier (KHD) * “Transitory” by Katie Dozier (KHD) * “Six Senryu from the Kitchen” by Sharon Ferrante
Carson Wolfe
BIRTH NAME AS ALTERNATE ENDING
My mother named me Carmen after the opera. More exotic than Sarah or Stacey, the other white girls jealous of my Latin gift. I’m not sure how old I was when I learned Carmen was a prostitute, bewitching boys in her flamenco dress, red as the apple Eve split with her ungovernable mouth. But it all made sense how Carmen’s gypsy ghost had followed me from room to room singing habanera since I was ten, when the first man made an epitaph of my body. In high school, she gave blowjob tips in the bathroom, carved the toilet stall with our namesake. L’amour l’amour, she taught me to love, tossing her rose to the boot of Don Jose, the same way I threw my skin suit into the chair of a tortured tattooist, for him to brand me a whore for looking anywhere but the floor the year he claimed me his. In Bizet’s ending, Carmen tries to leave Don, so he stabs her in the stomach and she bleeds out to the song of him pleading her name. In Muscato’s ending, Carmen kills Don in self-defense, infuriating an audience who came to applaud the death of a woman on stage. But why? Since you started reading this poem, another has been killed in her own home.In my ending, I sew up the thigh split in her red dress, a red flag to the first time I clung to porcelain, retching between sobs for daring to check my phone. I unpick bone from a corset borrowed from her wardrobe without asking, line up the fragments, shape a fossil of a woman with my face on. In my ending, I shave her hair so short, the only thing left to twirl, her middle finger—fuck you. In my ending, I bind her tits, asphyxiate ribs. I turn that bitch blue. In my ending, I unglue letters M and E from the curse of her name. Sign, S, O. Carson. In my ending, I kill her myself.—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
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Carson Wolfe: “Growing up Carmen in the north of England was unusual. On my mother’s mantel, a figurine of my namesake seduced the room, her dress pulled high up her ceramic thigh, a shrine to hyper-feminine sexuality and power. In Los Angeles, I’d travelled far enough to admire this power from a place that no longer housed me; when I saw a road sign that said Carson, exit here, I did.” (web)
Related* from “Wolfe” by Donald Mace Williams * “Six Reasons I Can’t Answer the Door for You at Three in the Morning” by Sarah Carson * “Sugar Babe” by Cherise A. Pollard
Emily Montgomery
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
for Chris
I wanted to save something beautiful for you. The last three jewels of glistening pomegranate balanced in the palm of my hand before I ate them. The morning birdsong in the lemon tree after you left for work, the memory of last night’s rain still written on the lawn. Or earlier, the haunting roundness of the moon over the canyon just before dawn when I couldn’t sleep, standing at the window, looking back at you, your body floating in the watery moonlight of our sheets. I mean something really beautiful, my love. The stillness in the house after the washing machine ceased to hum. The last line from a slender book of poems, a hardback from the library barely worn, repeated aloud for you, its bitter sweetness still lingering on my tongue. Or the way the baby slept so deeply while I read, burying himself in the secret scent of his favorite blanket. One arm thrown across that woolen teddy my mother gave us in those final weeks of waiting before his birth. The other hand open wide, fingers outstretched in a dancer’s graceful, expectant pose. I wanted to save all of this for you. But I couldn’t. It didn’t last. It never does. That brief moment of grace when the ordinary shines so exquisitely. At the end of the day you will return to us, as you always do, and we will both be tired, empty, distracted, spent. Everything more chaotic, more fragile, than when you left. —from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems
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Emily Montgomery died of cancer December 3rd, 2012, at the age of 34. She is deeply missed by her husband Chris Wakeham; her son, Miles; her daughter, Eloise, born eleven weeks early due to Emily’s illness; her mother; and her many, many friends. A romantic at heart, Emily captured the fleeting beauty and poignancy of daily life in her poetry.
Related* “Arrangement” by Missy-Marie Montgomery * “B-Word” by Judith H. Montgomery * “Remember” by Emily Garroway
If I could choose one poem of mine that illustrates the way the war never truly leaves you, it would be this one. I wrote it to show that to the reader, that’s all. Continue reading →
Sharon Ferrante
SIX SENRYU FROM THE KITCHEN
in the kitchen I don’t know how to actmeeting my flame kissing you—too much cilantro in the guacamole bad habit smoking catfish waiting for biscuits to bake flaky friends dandelion I add to the salad —a wish fondue dipping the moon lower —from Prompt Poem of the Month
August 2023
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Prompt: Write a poem in which something is cooked.Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “There were so many amazing prompt poems this month, but what set Sharon Ferrante’s senryu sequence apart was the fresh joy I found while reading it. At once whimsical and heart-warming, she took us on a journey in only a handful of words. The prompt for her winning poem was to ‘write a poem in which something is cooked,’ and Sharon delivered by cooking up a sequence that is a masterclass on how to write stunning senryu—haiku’s more playful cousin.”
Related* “Four Senryū” by Jeff Haas * “Five Senryū” by Timothy Liu * “What Is Not Lost” by Sharon Cote
‘Thinking about Her’ is simply what it says. I was thinking about a friend of mine, but the surprise, at least for me, is the sad face of the statue. That’s what she said to me, this friend, one day in Ha Noi. Continue reading →
Abby E. Murray
SUPERMOON
It doesn’t arrive so much as continue to exist, this blue supermoon exactly who she was just days before. When she’s this bright though, I tell my daughter, and this close, we give her another name, that’s all. I want to add that human kindnessis like this: never really changing,never gone. This week, she asked meif it was worth it, growing up in a cruel world—that’s the name she gave it, the name it earned. Cruel.So we sat outside at night to waitfor something spectacular to prove itself.We craned our necks like tourists in a cathedral,expecting to see the tidy, timely face of God,and all we got was a persuasion of cloudsso thick and cold we had to guesswhere the moon might be glowing.We had to point where the gloom was thinnestand say there! as if it was only as extraordinaryas it was out of sight—for us, for now—but it was happening, it was true,for thousands of years in a row.
—from Poets Respond
September 3, 2023
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Abby E. Murray: “My nine-year-old recently asked me point-blank if it was worth it to grow up in “such a cruel world” and I really didn’t know how to answer. Her point was that the violence and grief of living today might be beyond overwhelming, but I couldn’t help also noting the profound impact of kindness on the same world. And who are we to say with certainty that a deeply humane commitment to one another isn’t as old as our willingness to destroy? Kindness may be nearby all the time, even if we can’t see it; Wednesday’s blue supermoon was the perfect vehicle for me to finally try answering my daughter’s question about all the energy it takes to keep going right now.” (web)
Related* “Poem for My Daughter Before the March” by Abby E. Murray * “Motherhood for Beginners” by Abby E. Murray * “Free Shipping” by Abby E. Murray
Fae Merritt (age 9)
AN AUTOCORRECT POEM
Cats are comingDogs are not very friendlyMonkeys created a new lifeKoalas have a lot of explaining to doPandas need help from your parentsFoxes have been doing the wrong thingAnd bats are in the same house as youBATS ARE IN THE SAME HOUSE AS YOU—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Fae Merritt: “I like writing because it’s fun to make up stories and write about your ideas. It can be not real in the world but it becomes real when you write it.”
Related* “Inspiration” by Tabitha Welch * “A City” by Kofi Edufo * “This Is a Rhyming Poem” by James Crosse
Gray Thomas
SPEAKING OF BIRDS
1.When she spokebirds flew from her mouthand flew around the room.At first, we thought “beautiful.”What a marvelous spectacle. A nightingaleThen a swallow.Then a cockatoo. A parade of birds.After the seventh we became concerned.2.He aspired to become a bluebird.He focused on turning his hairinto feathers, turning his voice into chirps, his feet into tiny talons.He gave up his career in finance. One daysomeone asked him about dividends.He pecked at their oxfords.3. When she spokeshe spoke only of him.—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
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Gray Thomas: “This poem was composed after a writing prompt provided by the Salt Lake Community College Writing Center during an April 30/30 challenge. Due to the nature of the challenge, it was written hastily at a bar with a buzz of activity swirling around me. Sometimes I enjoy plucking the vibrations of people surrounding me—as though my pen is a needle on a seismograph measuring an earthquake.” (web)
Related* “In English Class, Discussing Signs & Symbols” by Mary Ellen Redmond * “The Nest at Applewood Apartments” by Patricia Fargnoli * “Birds” by Susan Firer
Image: “Here I Go” by Elizabeth Hlookoff. “Aphorisms Thrown into the Eye of the Blizzard” was written by Tamara Raidt for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG) __________ Tamara Raidt APHORISMS THROWN … Continue reading →
When I was fourteen they held a personal defense training for all the girls in my high school. It took
sixteen seconds Continue reading →
The hottest month of the hottest year on record. August in Texas. Unrelenting.
Mother had died just the month before. My mother. The world kept burning. Continue reading →
You’re a carefree, bouncy kid who still enjoys the little things like the sticky summer season every year and riding horses and fishing at the old docks past sunset. Continue reading →
Seeing the neighbor watering his pear tree, I see my father watering the mulberry trees in our yard. Continue reading →
Image: “Here I Go” by Elizabeth Hlookoff. “Fighting the Wind” was written by Teresa Breeden for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. Continue reading →
In the same way she’d told me that she’d eaten waffles with blueberries for breakfast, Deja raised her hand, said
My birthmother died from an overdose. Continue reading →
My therapist tells me I’m better off if you’re dead.
I mean, not dead-dead, maybe I’m paraphrasing. Continue reading →
Every wildlife adventurer understands the lure of spotting a rare creature in its natural habitat. Like when you're in an airboat, skimming over Continue reading →
“I like to write poetry because I can explain my thinking in a different way than others. I want to be an author in the future.” Continue reading →
In Victorian London, a farthing could buy you three oysters, with bread and butter, from an oyster-seller walking the streets. Or in the East End, a sparrow that God has forgotten to look out for. Continue reading →
I believe that the notion of seeing one’s writing wash off the body and down the drain is a conceit that very few people will experience over time, but that writers, nonetheless, strive for. It’s good, clean fun. Continue reading →
A drag show dressing room smells like Urban Decay and two-buck 80s hair shellac. Continue reading →
I was in love with a girl. And I can say this with absolute certainty, as I was in eighth grade, and eight graders know what love is Continue reading →
And still I fall back on the garden like a firebreak, as if its walls might contain the inferno sweeping through paradise Continue reading →
I miss the old green recliner The smell of fried chicken as I opened the door to my dad’s car The sound of him cooking in the kitchen Continue reading →
Our love is like a wave unleashed surrender to it let yourself be offset. Continue reading →
Todd Davis TATTOO Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s name cut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifier and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl who watched in the mirror as the … Continue reading →
I enjoy reading the issue of Rattle with all my friends in it until I realize this issue of Rattle has all my friends in it … Continue reading →
David Hernandez REMEMBER IT WRONG Everyone’s memory is subjective. If in three weeks we were both interviewed about what went on here tonight, we would both probably have very, very different stories. —James Frey on Larry King Live My front … Continue reading →
I'm sick of it being so hot. Where I live it isn't even as bad as it has been in other parts of the country, but it's still awful. Continue reading →
I like to write poetry because it gives me a different way to express my feelings. Continue reading →
A tiresome journey four tires and under the oil pan gum we’d drawn from the ashtray mintless and stiff Continue reading →
You’ve been the wolf, you’ve been the bear, / you were the grass when I was air Continue reading →
Digital textblock based on generative text co-authored by Sasha Stiles and her AI alter ego, Technelegy. 2023. Continue reading →
When’s a fork a spoon or a spoon a fork, little tines stinging out at the end? Continue reading →
Nicholas Holt FREE ASSOCIATION implies the existence of paid association and correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s how Shaquille O’Neal is making all his money. It seems like each time I pour a bowl … Continue reading →
Loaves pile up unleavened before the windburnt throng as Jesus’ groupies count lake trout, and math seems wrong. Continue reading →
Vy Hong (age 14) DARKNESS OF MIND She lies in the darkness Thinking of what used to be Suffering is part of life No one told her it would be this hard Thinking of what used to be She … Continue reading →
Lying in the sun on a grassy bank near a cliff edge is one of the most luxurious experiences life offers. The Llyn Peninsula juts out from North Wales into the Irish Sea—a dream, a wish, a song, a truth, a memory. Continue reading →
Image: “Untold Stories” by Judith Fox. “Image of a Woman Along a Sidewalk” was written by Jason Brunner for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG) __________ Jason Brunner IMAGE OF A WOMAN … Continue reading →
Sarah is bartending at Waterworks, a local tiki bar, and tells us about the box a colleague has with all the creepy notes men have slipped her, and I think most women have a box like this Continue reading →
Image: “Untold Stories” by Judith Fox. “Girl is Glued to Door” was written by William Ross for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG) Continue reading →
In the absence of any semantic communication, what interpretations can be given? Continue reading →
I'm gonna see the Barbie movie tonight because I had a feminist mother who didn't buy us Barbies and when I said I wanted to be a nurse, she said why don't you be a doctor … … Continue reading →
The day goes on regardless of the plight of man. And that is right. We are the dust that spoke, that saw the will of gods in flights of birds Continue reading →
Dust the tracks that mouse or men discarded thoughtlessly behind them, left that those of one who cracks the code may hack some clue. Continue reading →
I quit the news, turning my back on the world except for the weather robot on the radio: chrome manikin sitting all day, all night at a gray metal desk in a white broadcast booth reading the page of our future over and over into an old microphone big as a silver cucumber. Continue reading →
I should get a dog, an unwitting but willing emotional support animal, but what if, outside one day, just working in the yard, I have a horrible chainsaw accident and die Continue reading →
The collection doesn’t explode All at once: some bomblets Lurk and layer Cyanide on grief Continue reading →
Johnny Dean Mann SLOW GODS #6 objkt.com | image/gif Illuminated poetry via slow GIFs—a long-form, collaborative project with AI. #6: “The less humans are bound by their tradition, the greater the internal stirring of motives.” Full Text: … Continue reading →
I’m dreaming of the place in the woods / where the deer sleeps, the hole in the grass where it hid. Continue reading →
Already, still morning, I have fed someone helpless and attended to the needs of a dog
but as I walked my little hobbling walk with her, I failed to worship the sky. Continue reading →
He took to reading Chekhov late at night and studied up on Fox Talbot and calotypes. Continue reading →
I would have liked to have friends with a similar income (+/- 10%), the same equally socially valued type of job, the same car category, the same moderately high professional expectations … Continue reading →
Orcas are taking back the ocean. Let’s kiss. Social learning for social good? Sailed over our heads. Let’s kiss. Continue reading →
Decades past the little girl who swam in the pond filled
with lily pads and minnows. Continue reading →
In a fit of gloom, I googled the word failure, just to see if my name would come up. Instead, Google told me I misspelled the word failure. Continue reading →
Like studying the root origins of a word, I like to trace the stem of NFT poetry backwards through the centuries. What would Emily Dickinson have minted if she lived in our contemporary world? Continue reading →
It was my job to determine who the marchers were. And how long they had practiced the different steps they were used to making. I wouldn’t say that it was a hard job. Continue reading →
My mother stopped wearing a bra in the nursing home because the straps hurt her shoulders. Continue reading →
Devon Balwit ART = BEAUTY + SHIT I. Art that avoids shit is kitsch, said Kundera. Think proletarian posters, red and black, the size of building facades, muscular farmers, hoes and pitchforks lifted, Stalin kissing babies, no sign of … Continue reading →
a fruity one that you’ve been craving for the past day and a half there’s a woman in a pantsuit in front of you getting more and more agitated with the person on her phone Continue reading →
Playa El Zonte, a small town in El Salvador nicknamed “Bitcoin Beach,” became one of the first locales in the country to accept Bitcoin as a payment method, and inspired the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender. Continue reading →
Image: “A Lonesome Border” by Carmella Dolmer. “What the Astrologer Failed to See in Our Stars” was written by Dick Westheimer for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2023, and selected as an Editor’s Choice. Continue reading →
Snow falls like fists. Mamá sends Cesar, Tita, and me out to play, build snowmen, like the kids on TV, but Cesar puts it down my coat, makes me scream. Continue reading →
A goat full of Camel cigarette butts / is a wormed goat, people said. Continue reading →
A spoken-word poem by Ana María Caballero visualized via a series of works coded in p5js that convey pregnant time—with its sensations of inevitability, vulnerability, and physical entrapment. Written in Caballero’s signature straightforward style, this text forms part of her prize-winning manuscript Mammal. Continue reading →
And it is raining. Someone left an upright piano beside a steep road. Its case exposed like a throat. Continue reading →
My dad is a strong tree. He can never be broken by thunder or ice storms. Continue reading →
When my son went to prison, I ate sugar. His wife wanted no one outside the family to know; she used the word private three times and I can assure you I eat my sugar privately. Continue reading →
Image: “A Lonesome Border” by Carmella Dolmer. “You Don’t Have to Choose” was written by Beth Copeland for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2023, and selected as the Associate Editor’s Choice. Continue reading →
The Towering Text series explores the architecture of language, thinking about letters as the bedrock for the programming of the mind. On the other hand, letters are asemic objects, ink (or pixels) randomly arranged that become meaningful by convention and repetition. Continue reading →
This is where I was cited for reckless driving and my uncle quipped 95 is the route number, not the speed limit. Continue reading →
the entire borough of Queens doesn’t count, especially our sinkhole spot in the borough, no yellow cab traffic honks, or women striding through streets in high-heeled pumps, only roaring from Idlewild airfield practically at our backdoor. Continue reading →
Over there, there is a green thing in the way, under the silver of the moon that isn’t shining
because it is the daytime, and on its many arms, there are so many thorns you could call it a coat Continue reading →
My little niece rakes leaves, then runs full tilt into the pile, busting them up all over— with joy and guilt, and joy sprung from that guilt Continue reading →
In first grade, Peter brought a fat branch down on my neck for slogging around the first base line. Continue reading →
When the For You page on TikTok started showing me videos en español, I sunk deeper in the sheets: Continue reading →
as if the amber-hued stuff could actually deliver the promises of health and wholeness I read on each label Continue reading →
She lay at our feet with a metal arrow through her chest, the arrow angled in the ground not far from the lilac nest where she’d been sitting. Continue reading →
I got a call this morning from my father who said the smoke was so thick over home that it had come in the form of a brown fog to make your throat burn or what my sister said smelled like the apocalypse. Continue reading →
In this field of fireweed and wild oat that leans for ten thousand mornings to the east, I see the wind coming from miles and miles away like wakes at the back of an unseen boat. Continue reading →
The title of this poem comes from a Japanese story retold in various formats, and when I wrote the poem, this was the only title it could have. Continue reading →
The rhythm of the photocopier and the clarity of the images excite me. The first page of semicolons appears in the document tray. Continue reading →
There was never any evidence of it, between them: my parents slept with their door wide open, in case we should call, my father’s breath so close I could hear the scrape of his snoring Continue reading →
John Herschel
WAITING
Things don’t happen, they appear.When I ask for a spoon,they bring me a fork;waiting has turned my spooninto a fork.The phone rings,a huge distance between your headand your other head.There’s a place in the desertwhere people go and shoot their cars,discovered by De Anza on his perfumed horse.My step-father in an orange vestis still directing traffic in my head.You can drown on the staircase,you can wait for the desert to arrive.The sky is a hat that neither covers nor hides.I have a long conversation with the wall,the longest lunar eclipsein 123 years,an Abyssinian moon that shatters windows.My sleeve has a long memory.I change my point of viewfrom one napkin to another.My neighbor sayspeople are polite to the degreethey’re repressing an impulseto kill you.Mules are carrying the loadfor no reason at all.The rain in the gutter turns north,a dog shakes himself in the rain.It is a world ruled by the god of armored carsand men in yellow shortstaking pictures of the sunset.My other neighbor saysit’s almost as if life were meant to be wasted,as if you hadn’t lived enoughuntil you’d wasted your life.I hear the little voice inside my head:Hurry up and die, hurry up and die.But the little voice inside my headis like that guy in the Midwestwho writes everything down:5:47 PM, earwax on the phone;there’s an ant on my wrist.His life is about three secondsahead of his diary.And it’s beautiful tonight.Every chance I getI wish I didn’t have to die.The plucky dog is still scratching his ear,the asparagus fern is coming back.A skunk came into the kitchenand ate the cat food.My two cats and I looked at him,and then we looked at each other.Now only little thoughtsare running after me,wanting to be wateredand wanting to be fed,like a quick tidethat raises and lowersthe level of the glass.—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
Tribute to the Best of Rattle
__________
John Herschel: “If you write poems, even your best friends won’t care. Your enemies might notice, but their attention will inevitably wander. Freedom of speech is also the freedom not to listen. People who think writing poetry is therapeutic are not writing poetry. Maybe more poets have been driven mad by trying to get a line right, than the mad have been driven well by writing a good line. In America we don’t like useless things. Ours is a culture of uplift and good intentions. The pathologically optimistic are suspicious of a poem’s reluctance to sing along. But maybe useless is useful in a world blind to its own impermanence. Anger is probably the only reliable substitute for inspiration, and given what’s happening to this country, everyone should be sublimely inspired.”
Related* “When’s a Fork a Spoon” by Marianne Boruch * “KGB Orchestra at the High School Prom” by John Herschel * “Seven Simple Exercises…” by Tim Poland
made this place. Providence Canyon: one of the seven wonders of Georgia, a two-hundred-foot dent in the ground of Stewart County, courtesy of farmers with bad irrigation techniques. Continue reading →
Thomas Mixon
POISON IN EVERY PUFF
You can quit.We can help.Times are bad,but what elseis new? Youclue us in,with each breath,to what morewe must do.We failed you.We want youstrong and fullof vim. Lifegasps, and veersoff the roadwhen you suckin the smoke.We suck, wehave let youdown, got youhooked, raised taxon your vice,blew the doughon false threats,big flags, grabbedland and nowstand with signs,small, to stampon your gravestones, your sootsticks, your kind,while you die.Who was itwho said fateis the sameas a hillbuilt by ants?Was hope partof the quote?That’s one morething that goes,your mind. Sometypes of fumesare wrong, someless so. Firmspay a fineto shoot gasway up high.We must bestern with you.We gave yougoals you litwith a match.If you chooseto kiss flames,we will boostthe font, wordsso big noone will seeyour gaunt face,your cheeks stucknext to text.We will tauntyou to raiseyour mood. Thereis no phrasewe won’t use.Why waste timeand ask whosefault this is?We aimed toohigh, grand schemesthat dropped outof the sky,like fire antsat the peakof a ventthat coughed, burstfrom fixed screenswhile the clocktick tocked. Shameis the lastchance we have.Your charred lungsare not clean.We don’t aimto be mean,but it isall the same.If it works.—from Poets Respond
June 4, 2023
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Thomas Mixon: “The title and first two lines of this poem come from the warnings that Canada will soon be printing not only on boxes, but on individual cigarettes. I lost a set a grandparents to Big Tobacco and am in favor of anything that can help people quit. But I don’t think anything could’ve made them stop. When I was in 3rd grade, I wrote that what I wanted most for Christmas was for everyone in the world to stop smoking, and if they didn’t I would make them. My younger self would have loved these warnings, but now it just makes me sad.” (web)
Related* “Every Friday” by Thomas Mixon * “Quiet Quit” by John Hodgen * “Relic” by Russell Brakefield
Do you know what is never the right tool for the job? Needle-nose pliers. Anytime I use needle-nose pliers
it is with hopeless resignation. Continue reading →
Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl
HOW LA GUITARRA WAS BORN
Long ago, there was a vaquerowho rode alone on the plainsexcept for his horse,and his herd of cattle.He was hungry for a woman,but there was no womanfor hundreds of miles.While riding, he saw a treeand chopped it down.When he peeled the bark offhe saw the wood was a rich golden brown.With his machete,he carved the trunk into the form of a woman.By the campfire that night,he held the woman of wood in his lap.With his left handhe caressed her neck.With his right handhe played with her breasts and tummy.The woman of wood moaned with pleasureand began to sing.With happiness in his heart, the vaquero sang along with her.Each night by the light of the campfirethey sang, and that is how la guitarra was born.—from Rattle #12, Winter 1999
Tribute to Latino/Chicano Poets
__________
Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl: “Poetry is the oldest of the arts, outside the art of preparing food, without which there could be no other arts. For me, it is a way of communicating my indignation of the injustices that exist within our human society, particularly that of too many decisions being made by too few people.”
Related* “The Secret” by Sarah Cortez * “Coast Road” by E.G. Burrows * from “Wolfe” by Donald Mace Williams
How much human happiness can we stand? I don’t know but don’t we all like to drive fast? Continue reading →
Matthew Gavin Frank
AFTER SENZA TITOLO, 1964
painting by Corrado Cagli
I promised him I would not saygrasshopper, or superman. SoFortune is this fish and thisflower, and neither are the body—not some smart flatof a knife. Not somewondering about the stars.The coming into the worldinsectile, or some dumb gangof coral, smacked with its first air—I can’t look at a fish without thinkinghow lucky they are to havethe ocean. How can they watchthe stars? It’s beautifulwhat must be substitute,their words for night,the different way theyhold their fins.How we come intothis thin tissue with a strokeof fingertip over gill, the wordswe have to explain, dumbas the coral—wing to bird, finto fish, leaf to tree—is thatthe best we can do?Our heartbreak is last year’snest, the frozen lake, the yardwe forgot to rake. The lieis that we’ll miss our families most.Instead: the silver batteriesagitating the surface of the water,the things we aren’t—some wildmating we can only read about,all strange biology and our heartsthat are a part of it, kept from us,something else we’re not. We’remade up of servantswithout a lord, working to push ustoward cold water andit’s beautiful, we’re scienceand there is no substitutefor the stars. Not motheror husband or daughter, but fish,but finch, but fir.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
__________
Matthew Gavin Frank: “I’ve ran a tiny breakfast joint in Juneau, Alaska; worked the Barolo wine harvest in Italy’s Piedmont; sautéed hog snapper hung-over in Key West; designed multiple degustation menus for Julia Roberts’ private parties in Taos, New Mexico; served as a sommelier in Chicago; and authored a book of poems. Tonight, in the kitchen, I will combine blesbok venison with chocolate, jalapeño, espresso, and blood orange.” (web)
Related* “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem” by Matthew Olzmann * “In the Nostalgia Chair” by Matthew Murrey * “Emotional Self-Regulation, with Birds and Gifted Child” by Sean Kelbley
Howard Nelson
LITTLE RICHARD
What was it that gave me the discerning taste when I went into the record store in 1958, when I was twelve years old, an ordinary kid (white) in the suburbs, middle class, to buy the album Here’s Little Richard? It may have been the first of the big vinyl discs that became my record collection, which was for me for a while there (and in a way still is) something like the Bible is for religious people. What it really was was good fortune, and being young and ignorant, but interested, and being able to walk into the record store, in the riches of a moment of time. And there was Little Richard. His screams came out of gospel, though I didn’t know that at the time. I knew “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” and “Long Tall Sally,” and I’m sure Little Richard’s piled high hair had something to do with it too.Early on he crossed back over to gospel, but later he crossed back again. Many crossings and recrossings, ups and downs, comebacks and never-lefts, in his long career and life. Little Richard was not little—he was five feet ten.His name was Richard Pennimen. Somehow he lived to be eighty-seven.Even musicians thought of as the pioneerswere influenced in their pioneeringby what Little Richard had already done.Elvis said he was his inspiration.Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers,recorded his songs. The first time he toured Europe, the opening act was The Beatles. He gave Paul McCartney singing lessons. If you want to remember him on his passing, I recommend watching the video of him doing “Lucille” in 1957.He’s wearing a beautiful baggy white suit, it must have been linen,and there are three saxophone players moving in sync behind him, two guitars, bass, and drummer, also in white suits, and Richard out front, with his tall pompadour,standing-dancing at the piano, skinny mustache, blazing eyes. Nobody’s eyes opened wider than Little Richard’s. He had a purity, a beauty, a laughter and a fire. But you might also watch Otis Redding’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Otis, of course, was long gone, more than twenty years, but it was a good choice to have Little Richard do the honors. He had a gift for public speaking, as frenetic, and beautiful in its way, as his singing. He was no longer young that evening, but the energy and his spirit were still with him. “I’m still here—I still look decent,” he said, and he did, still with his mustache, now with a long mullet of lustrous curls.Who better to sing selections from Otis’s songs? Just a few verses. And when Otis’s widow, Zelma,came up to accept the award, Richardput his arms around her, and held her. And when she had given her moving, tearfultwo sentence speech, it was beautiful how he walked with her, how he escorted her, with great tenderness, from the stage.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
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Howard Nelson: “I’ve been writing poems that are a kind of personal archeology—poems of memories from early years, which are also celebrations of cultural figures important to me, and important to the bigger flow of the historical moment I happened to drop into, being born when I was. So, Little Richard. One of the flamboyant greats. Other poems in this vein, to James Brown, Otis Redding, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Ronettes, and others, are in my book That Was Really Something.” (web)
Related* “Counting to Twelve at Willamette Park” by Linnea Nelson * “How Much Does Your House Weigh” by Richard Cole * “Elegy for My 1958 Volkswagen” by Ruth Bavetta
Wendy Videlock
LIGHTS TURN OFF IN MAY AT THE GATEWAY ARCH TO ASSIST MIGRATORY BIRDS
It makes sense in every sense of the word to turn the lights off for the song bird, that she may find her way. True, too, for the waterfowl, the barn owl, the cactus wren— even the mouse prefers a darkened house in which to nibble her grains. It’s even true the fiddler’s tune will only begin to dance when under a subtle crescent moon. If not for the dark, no spark, says the sparrow and the meadowlark— beware the ones who fear the dark, who refuse to look a shadow in the eye, who have no interest in the sky unless it’s rendered itself so blue it won’t reveal the distance between it and you. It isn’t the moral but the heart of the story: the raven’s claw, the falcon’s beak the eagle’s scree, the rotting little memento mori. There is no wing, no blissful flight, no finding your way, no resting gently in the nest and nuzzling your little egg without the calling of the rest: the grief song, the suddenly wan,the fallen star, the weight of loss,the lights that flicker,and turn off.—from Poets Respond
May 28, 2023
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Wendy Videlock: “I was recently asked why poets seem to be so fascinated by birds. I thought for a moment about how I could carry on at length about the bird as metaphor, as symbol, as guiding star, as constant companion wherever we go—about beauty itself—about life itself—about death itself—and then I finally just said, we can learn a lot about birds …” (web)
Related* “On Ceremony” by Wendy Videlock * “A Toast” by Wendy Videlock * “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Yellow-Headed Blackbird” by Wendy Videlock
Sharon L. Charde
LOVE’S EXECUTIONER
I come from a proud Polish poet sent to Siberia, rightarm cut from his body, punishment for poems—the first daughter of a man from Naples who wasa baby in a ship’s hold, women screaming and prayingthe rosary, afraid of God’s teeth, chocolate cake,my mother’s blood, my car crashing into yourson the Mass Pike or 84, and the brown spots and bruiseson my arms, afraid of saying yes and bank accountsand a branch of the big silver maple falling on my roof.I believe in the gray flannel pants of the therapist whotook them off, the room I shared with the other onein Beijing, the woman who lives alone on an islandwho cannot tell our story because she has forgotten it.They say I always wanted to get out and I should goback to church and not much else except that I wasthe girl who got A’s and they wanted me to keepgetting A’s but then I got C’s and in that apartmentin Philadelphia I pulled the green and blue bedspreadoff the bed and draped it over the kitchen table, madea little tent so I could scream while the babies criedand no one would hear—and you were gone thenbut I don’t want to talk about that and me pushingthe cheap plaid stroller your mother got with S&Hgreen stamps waiting for another baby that I didn’twant but when it came I did want it, such a beautifulsoft baby holding me and I didn’t know the seedsof death were in him already. Do you know this, ifyou are very good and do all the proper ritualslike making a different hamburger casserole everynight, scrubbing the tile in the bathroom on Saturdaymorning, ironing all the pillowcases—that even if youdo this you will not get the prize of keeping your childrenalive. Tell me why I love her again when I am love’sexecutioner and dream I was a girl in a burn unitwho will not recover, tell me what will come fromthe apartment on the second floor which is all bluewith a white bed as big as a small ship and a windowover a bathtub that looks out onto the tree I almostbacked into with my red Saab and the Dresden girlson the mantle over the fireplace that cannot burnanything. Tell me about the woman who lives therewho walks with a black cane and wears a blue sweaterand I wore one too that day though I never wear blueand yesterday how I was the wind and she bound me in.—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
Tribute to Mental Health Workers
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Sharon L. Charde: “My younger son died twenty years ago in a mysterious accident in Rome; my older son graduated from college a week after his funeral and left home to live his life. I knew I was not needed as a mother anymore, I had burned out in my job as a family therapist and that to survive, I had to return to my first love, writing poems. This love and practice has sustained me more than anything else since then. When people tell me that my poems have affected their lives in powerful ways, that I speak in an honest and clear voice, that my grief supports theirs, I want to keep on writing and I do.” (web)
Related* “Cut Clove” by Sharon Olds * 2013 Rattle Poetry Prize Winners * “Everything Is Broken” by Sharon Kessler
Kat Lehmann
OCEAN ANCIENT AND EVOLVING
—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
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Kat Lehmann: “I haven’t seen anyone else write sudo-ku. I started playing with the form last summer while doodling and watching my daughter’s swim practice. People ask me how I do it, but it’s hard to explain. I mean, how do you explain how to write a single haiku, let alone ten interwoven haiku? It’s a meditative experience, really. I’ve found that I have to write all ten at once so the poem stays balanced. If I start with one strong haiku, it doesn’t work. They all have to be able to shift and learn to play together. There’s also the obvious grammatical considerations so you don’t get stuck with a preposition as the last word.” (web)
Related* “Taxonomy” by Kat Lehmann * “Godfather Death” by Rebecca Lehmann * “Watching The Wizard of Oz, Summer 1988” by Rebecca Lehmann
Image: “All of Us” by Lou Storey. “The World Beneath” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Devon Balwit
THE WORLD BENEATH
Peel the disappointed world back to its precursor—a child’s town of bright primaries, streets where the sun finds no impediment and the wind none richer, none poorer. No one suffers or dies there—not even one invisible dog sniffing the blue salt air. The boats in the harbor, the phone poles, the hills and the houses all speak a language before language,that tuneful hum above the shapes in a board-book. There even shadows hesitate to fall, mother nowhere in sight, the afternoon lazy and long.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2023, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “As the title indicates, the poet imagines Lou Storey’s colorful and complex piece as depicting a ‘precursor’ to our current world (‘the disappointed world’), a more pure and essential civilization, and after viewing it through that lens, I can’t see it any other way. I found the language here to be irresistibly interesting, effortless lines that so aptly describe a place that doesn’t quite exist but is simultaneously more real than reality. I was particularly struck by ‘the houses all speak / a language before language, / that tuneful hum above / the shapes in a board-book,’ which I interpret as an incredible expression of the primitive way we experience the world as pre-verbal children, and a passage that will stick in my mind for a long time.”
Related* “This Room” by Devon Balwit * “Faces in the Clouds” by Devon Balwit * “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” by Devon Balwit
Y.S. Lee
REBUKE THE GHOSTS
My grandmother’s soap opera was set in Manchu times, when men with fierce eyeliner skirmished with swords while, indoors, porcelain-pale women spoke tremulous vows.If prodded, she would translate major plot points from Mandarin to Teochew but fell silent when asked why, how. She walked on white runners with velcro tabs, each shuffling stepa countdown to the unfailing lament about her sour feet. She couldn’t abide milk, coffee, beef, morsels rawor rich—though once felt too queasy for anything butdeep-fried squab.She spoke three languages, probably more, but balkedat English—its cacophonies the white noise beyond herthreshold. Lunch began when she was ready; she hadn’trushed since 1941,the year she was twenty, when the Japanese army strolleddown Malaya’s spine. Whole towns fled to the jungle, pushingladen bicycles, shouldering sacks of rice, gold earringshemmed into shirts.On their return, they scraped shit off kitchen floors, knocked last crumbs of glass from their own window frames, swept looted attics for any remnantsof their lives.The house was haunted thereafter. She descended first each morning, to rebuke the ghosts. With the spirits in submission, she was free tobuild a fire,simmer grain into porridge. In the long seasons without, she boiled bamboo shoots, changing the water three times to leach their poison. She and her sister never steppedoutdoors, wore boy’s clothing so the washing line didn’t advertise their presenceto soldiers. By the time an indifferent peace was declared she was an encumbrance: twenty-five yet unmarried, her parents anxious.When the matchmaker presented her future husband withtwo photos, he shrugged. Whichever. The randomness of four children, her final decades in a city with the wrong trees, mountains, light.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
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Y.S. Lee: “I write because it requires me to pay attention. (Otherwise, my whole life could trickle by and I might never notice.) It’s a way to map connections between what I observe, what I think I know, and what I remember.” (web)
Related* “To the Man Who May or May Not Be My Father” by Lewis Crawford * “Between Missing and Found” by Christine Poreba * “The Tale of La Llorona” by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Bill Christophersen
HOLE
I
When the toddler disappeared (the septic tank’scountersunk manhole cover not quite centeredand so become a revolving door), the Maysun was drying the grass of the bed-and-breakfast’smanicured front lawn. A gardenerwas coaxing a power mower up the property’sstreet-side incline, one hand on the throttle,the other on the driving wheel’s black dish.When the father disappeared (down the same hole,self-preservation trumped by something elsemore limbic still, some gut-level imperativeor sense that hell had got him by the balls,no matter how he played it), the mother, aloneand shaking, screamed with her whole body.The gardener jammed the stick in park and hovehis lumbering, sweating self from the metal seat.Then the mother disappeared (belayedby the gardener’s sausage fingers round her ankles,arms flailing the stinking darkness; flailingand groping, the acrid stench suffocatingas her terror of the epiphany that life,into which we bring these ones we love,can snatch them by the toe and eat them whole;can leach their little hides, do what we will).Then the child reappeared (hauled up bodily,the mother, arms extended like a midwife’s,seizing it in midair from the father,who, plunging deep, had gone to work, feelingpast turds till hand touched skull, then tuggedthe curled-up infant from the pissy muckand raised it above his head, a living trophy―delivered to its mother, then babe and mom deliveredby the puffing gardener, whose yells of “Help! Baby!”brought a passing mom-and-stroller, hence cleanwater, disinfectant wipes, cell phone and the steadyvoice required to summon 911).Below, the father, treading bilious sludge,barked knuckles on cement, then struck a rung―egress from that twilight zone of filth;chimney to pure light, sun-drenched salvation.And so the father reappeared (climbingout of deeper shit than I or anyoneI know has ever been encompassed by).One doesn’t think, they say, at times like this;one reacts. One thinks all sorts of things: How deep?Well? Cesspool? Caustic chemicals? Will Iland on him? Break his back? My back? Is hedead already? Am I committing suicide?The ambulance arrived in a minute-thirty.Son and father had stomachs pumped, got meds,caught colds, got better. All three wake up screamingmore often than most of us. The parents showerway more than they need to. The two-year-oldclimbs the walls at the mention of bath time butotherwise is doing fine. Turns out babieshold their breath instinctively under water.II
One wants the tale to end there, and perhapsit does, a centerpiece of family lore, amiracle of love, bravery, a specialdispensation all three share going forward.But perhaps the enormity of the episode,like a dark star, warps the space around it,and the debt of love incurred toward the fathersmothers the wife, and later the child, in guilt.Perhaps the father, a dozen or more years later,watching his teenage son do reckless things,thinks, “What right’s he got to pull this kindof shit on me?” Or, seething at the wife’sobiter dicta and bickering retorts,thinks, “Why was it up to me to take the plunge?Was my life more expendable than yours?”Perhaps the boy, unable at last to abidethe horror of that day, its happy endingnotwithstanding, loses the knack for trust,without which nothing much is ever ventured,fought for, wrestled with, maintained in spiteof obstacles? Perhaps no foothold everfully persuades; no morning sun on greenlawn but signifies some nightmare’s mise-en-scène; no darkness seems negotiable.III
A miracle is deceptive. Isolated,it can make all history seem foreordained,as if the jeweled part stands for the wholebloody mess, that far less scintillatingprospect. There’s the chance, of course, that life’sa latticework, a series of intersectingmiracles or miracle plays whose charactersappear/disappear within the larger structure,a glimpse of which we’re occasionally afforded:no clockwork universe but one ably directedby the playwright himself, who, understandablyperhaps, bends over backward to retainhis privacy, anonymity, invisibility,though peering, now and then, from a wing to nodor appearing, like Alfred Hitchcock, in a cameo―as grandfather, gardener, deus ex machina.A tempting proposition, this invisiblescript, this hidden teleologyin which each of us plays an unwitting part.But over and against it is the hole―unspeakable; mephitic; defiling;predatory, one almost wants to say;lying there beneath resplendent grasson which young couples and their babies play.—from Rattle #40, Summer 2013
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Bill Christophersen: “‘Crossing the Bar’ and ‘Ozymandias’ floored me in ninth grade, and hearing Bill Zavatsky and Gregory Orr read when I was in college helped me realize poems weren’t made by gray-bearded deities. When I turned 23, the country band I was playing in dissolved, the girl I was seeing walked, and I was alone in eastern Long Island with winter coming on. It was write or start drinking, and I’m not a drinking man.”
Related* “Neighbor” by Bill Christophersen * “Scientists Panicked by Vanished Star” by Jennifer Reeser * “Dream of the Disappeared” by Cecil L. Sayre
Veronica Kornberg
IMPROVIDENT
That dream, a small cottagewith windows facing the Pacific and—wait for it—priced within reason.Of coursethere were none.So for twenty-five years we simply drovethe twisty mountain routethrough a green welter of redwoodsto bottom out along the coastamong scattershot barnsand rusty propane tanks, happyto end up at the state beach,shield our ham and cheesefrom sand-laced wind.Eventually our fruitless quest was moreidle banter than actual searchthough we still nosedinto abandoned shacksand tire track lanes dead-endingin junk heaps. What more could we want?One foggy day we spieda peeled and faded sign set backamong overgrown cypress,a footpath through a dense thicketof dead pines that led to a cliff,and perched on its crumbling edge—a tiny house, crusted with orange lichen,brown algae and termite wings, the redwoodwater tank staves bowed and bleeding water.Within weeks our 401(k) was gutted,we were out chopping dead treesand fiddling with a pump bladder,fielding chiropractors, pricingused tractors. We chimed the namesof everything around us—wrack line, blackberry, wentletrap,wooly sea daisy and gumboot chiton.We took it all on faith, as is.Below us, the violent seabroke its beautiful teeth on the rocks.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
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Veronica Kornberg: “Perhaps this poem reflects my inner Flopsy Bunny, about whom Beatrix Potter said, ‘They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.’” (web)
Related* “The Poe Cottage, 1992” by Katherine Barrett Swett * “Vermont” by Marc Elihu Hofstadter * “Separation” by Michael Dylan Welch
John W. Evans
FIRELINE
And when I heard the two cabins might burn downat the same time, on maybe even the same day,I rooted for the fire. Like many CaliforniansI followed with great precision and attention the interactive, up-to-the-minute digital mapsthat showed a progression of devastation past the water’s edge of the popular tourist destinationwhere my ex-wife’s familyhad leased summer cabins since the 1920s, where even that spring they had gathered to enjoy the beautiful, pristine wildernessof land the state said belonged to no one.It was a technicality, thatoutrageous claim renewed every ten yearsby legacy, a claim I had once enjoyedin an elaborate festival of coming togetherwe called a marriage: ten years,then somehow faster and less forgivingthe controlled burn of divorcethat took it back. It only took a few months to reach the woods and the lake. The second cabin was half the size of the first and much closer to the fireline.All it had to do was catchone spark near the composting toiletand the surroundings cabins would tremble. Unfair,that spark that every day kept not catching,as fist-sized embers crowned the trees.It was the old growth. I knew they’d fight the hardest.I had fought against it for years, the impossibility we might still love each other. We might reclaim together the thing she did not want me to have. SoI imagined it myself. Every day the fire took a little more: Great-Grandma Pummie’s game trophies,Uncle Chum’s Turkish rugs, Puck’s first editions,all swept up into the pyro-cumulus and out across state line,with every last remnant of these families and what they cherished.But the redwood decks and lead-glass windows, the rockfalls and surrounding acres of old-growth foresthung in, as sturdy as my dog’s chin on my knee.He watched me watch the screen. When it was timeto walk, the sky had changed to orange, then blue. Then, the wind shifted, capricious and weary of the granite. The people returned. Their cabins were there. In the city around the lake bears had broken inand filled their bellieswith syrup and thawed steaks,an early hibernation, a carcass every few yardsstuck in the mud with singed or infected paws. Who is left to love what is gone if it belongs to no one else;who dares warm his hands over the ashor rub his chest with the spite-tongued black, murmuring, Mine, still mine. You do not belong to someone else.—from The Fight Journal
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John W. Evans: “I wrote the poems in The Fight Journal to make sense of an experience about which I felt strongly biased: my divorce. I wanted to recognize the humanity of all involved on the page because this was something I struggled to do in real life. I hoped to find closure, healing, and an answer to two questions. Why had my marriage failed? How had I been complicit in that failure? Adrienne Rich’s ‘From An Old House in America’ was the formal model for the long title poem. Marta Tikkanen’s ‘The Love Story of the Century’ was a precedent for writing about these dynamics. Both poems are personal favorites.” (web)
Related* “Musicians at the Wedding” by John W. Evans * “Pussy Nation” by R.G. Evans * “Crash” by Anna M. Evans
Jim Feeney
IRISH HISTORY
The problem with it isthere’s too much of it.It weighs on our backslike a sack of blighted potatoes.It adheres to uslike meaning adheres to a sentence.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Jim Feeney: “I was born in Dublin and grew up there. Dublin is a city with a long literary history but I think perhaps it’s that Dubliners need to make a remark that most informs my poetry, that need to get people’s attention to make them laugh. Which is not to say that my poems are jokes or are necessarily funny but making a remark or joke involves a compression of language and an ability to analyse a situation that is also essential in writing poetry. Of course, I don’t always succeed.” (web)
Related “Phone Sox” by Matthew Feeney * “Portrait of Kevin Barry in The Irish Times*” by Anne Casey * “Oíche na Gaoithe Móire” by Frank Dullaghan
Annie Grimes
HOW IT FEELS WHEN MEN ATTEMPT TO COMPLIMENT CAITLIN CLARK
“If this is the future of the WNBA,
I might just watch”
—some man on ESPN’s Instagram
Once at a local coffee shop trying to pound some pages out of a story I’d hoped would write itself,I overheard a guy being so forthrightwith his date that I nearly choked on the iced mocha I choked down to stay awake. It was evident the two knew each other previously,that to him the topics of conversation came easily, and I tuned out the sound of the barista yelling names at the shop’s crowd to better eavesdrop on the eagerness with which he spokethe most unbelievable truths aloud:You know about my Adderall addiction,right? he asked, and the woman laughed, and I noticed both her legsbouncing beneath the top of the table.I did molly once with this girl at a rave, he raved, but I mostly just drink,and I think, at that, the woman smiled. Midway through a sentence the maninterrupted himself to admit he hadn’t been staring at her tits,but they were nice, and if I recallthis came across as polite in context. You’re really cool and I don’t care what anyone else says, was his concluding message, and the pair left together promptly after that. I shuffled in my seat,decently hopped up on the mocha,not one word typed and trying not to hate the way the humor of the date outweighed the weight its witnessing left in my chest. ’Cause every woman I know is home to this particular brand of hurt: knowing a man who realizes his capacity to care only after he realizes he cares for her. —from Poets Respond
April 4, 2023
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Annie Grimes: “I wrote this poem after seeing a bunch of TikToks showcasing Caitlin Clark’s standout performance in the NCAA tournament. Although I rarely watch sports—men’s or women’s—I know better than to peruse the comments of any social media post highlighting the accomplishments of female athletes. Despite this, I always click on the comments, and I always feel worse afterward. For some reason this feeling felt best conveyed in the context of a conversation I overheard at a local coffee shop a few months ago, the specifics of which I have been unable to shake since.” (web)
Related* “In the Pipeline’s Path” by Annie Woodford * “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends” by Caitlin Gildrien * “A Matter of Time” by Annie Kantar
Frank Dullaghan
OÍCHE NA GAOITHE MÓIRE
“The Night of the Big Wind”—On the night of 6th January 1839, the worst storm ever reported hit the west coast of Ireland. With winds of up to 130 mph it devastated the country, claiming up to 800 lives, according to some reports.
How could one account for it, coming as it didduring the hours of darkness, building itself upin the black of night? Rain-sodden, it lashedthe thatched roofs of cabins until they collapsed,ripped spires off churches, tumbled walls.Cattle froze to death where they stood. Sheepwere bowled off the sides of mountains.It roared in from the open Atlantic and travelledeastwards, ripped through Dublin, blew boatsfrom Skerries across the Irish Sea. The likehad never been seen. It was the start, the Seanachaí storytellers said later, shaking their heads. It was the great leaving. The Sidhe, the Irish fairies,who lacking wings, travelled on the back of windsthey raised, had left Ireland in mighty numbers.For sure, there were not many of them left whenthat night was over—hay ricks scattered, Hawthornand Rowan whipped to shreds, and the music and lights that were sometimes witnessed around fairy forts, no longer seen. It was a catastrophe. Less than a decade later, a blight would comeon the potato crop, and famine would sendfamilies into the west in coffin ships, crossingthe same ocean that had held that Gaoithe Móirein its maw, continuing the Sidhe’s great leaving. The land lifted from the water, the Seanachaí said,with the weight of so many gone.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Frank Dullaghan: “The big thing I learned from Kavanagh was the power of an image. I remember his famous poem ‘In Memory of My Mother.’ His mother’s buried in a churchyard in Monaghan, but he sees her on a market day walking through the town, and he remembers her as they’re stacking up the ‘ricks of hay against the moonlight.’ I remember that image, and I could see it when I first read it; it was like a lightning bolt. I don’t know why certain images hit us, but that image—I could see it. There was no great thing happening here; it was just those simple words, and yet they had the power to create this picture in my head. I remember thinking, ‘I need to be able to do that, get these images, find simple words to capture something and put it down.’” (web)
Related* “Promenade des Anglais” by Frank Dullaghan * “How Quickly the World Can Change” by Frank Dullaghan * “Instructions for the Day After” by Julia B. Levine
Abby E. Murray
SELF-PORTRAIT AS CORIANDER SEED
Specifically, one of many coriander seedsin an envelope my daughter bought at Lidlusing a pinch of her birthday money, which is to say she is only nine, has no income nor any right to vote in a country where the leading cause of death for kids her age is a bullet made by and for voting adults. This morning, the newspaper shows how the round of an assault rifle blooms immediately when planted in the body of a child—my child, for example, or yours, the bullet a bit like a seed except this kind only grows an irreversible, merciless absence. See how I wrote those words and survived, how you read them and lived? You and I,we just keep getting smaller, more hardened.Whatever hope we have left is crouched within us, waiting to germinate. Are we notalso children being taught to hide until we’re told we’re safe and pretend to believe it?My daughter is still young enough to love me unabashedly, as she loves cilantro, sowingone of her first independent dreams beneath a scrap of dirt in the center of the yard because I wasn’t there to veto the spot she chose:a slight rise where the mower cuts lowest, its blade slicing so deep that not even dandelionshave been able to sprout roots there till now.And I’m telling you, I’ll mow around that placeforever if it lets those seeds rise up, unfurling as slow and beloved as they like, I’ll let the grass grow wild, and the tiny violets too.—from Poets Respond
April 2, 2023
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Abby E. Murray: “I wrote this while sitting outside my daughter’s school, waiting to pick her up from engineering club where they learn to make balloon-powered cars and popsicle-stick catapults in a world armed with steel and fire. All the children killed at a school in Tennessee this week were the same age as her. That morning, the Washington Post offered in-depth coverage of ‘The Blast Effect,’ or what happens inside a child’s body when an AR-15 round pierces it, because it is considered ‘critical to public knowledge,’ and I suppose they’re right. We, as a public, are being ignored by government officials who do not care how many times a day we’re forced to imagine our own children dying, or worse, experience it. We are being shown how to picture it more vividly, how to maintain ourselves as part of the problem. My own hope can sometimes feel small as a dry kernel; my daughter’s hope, which is expansive and certain, is what might save it.” (web)
Related* “Poem for My Daughter Before the March” by Abby E. Murray * “How to Be Together” by Abby E. Murray * “Motherhood for Beginners” by Abby E. Murray
Rose Foster (age 8)
EULOGY FOR A BALLOON
A balloon once lived for a month and a little bit more until Daddy accidentally murdered him. But he is still in our hearts. He was brave to be pushed in the air. I remember when he made a little girl laugh so hard that she screamed. And this is true. He traveled with me upstairs and downstairs. His final trip was upstairs. I wish I could tell you all the adventures but the last adventure you can see ends here in this chilly sandbox with sandwiches. You may eat them. —from 2014 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
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Why do you like to write poetry?
Rose Foster: “Because I can write whatever I want. Be creative and stuff. You get to do whatever words you want. But they have to make sense.”
Related* “Black” by Lyla Foster * “Sometimes” by H. Sky Clay * “What We Heard About the Americans” by Rachel Rose
Martina Dalton
MOTORWAY MAN
I want to tell you: I watched you sleep on the side of the road with your chest held in the fireman’s hands. His face turned from the traffic slowing down. Not sure what I was witnessing at first—uninvited to your death. As your breath rose up higher than the traffic fumes. Red arteries clogging up the grey sat nav screen. You—only doing what this day, this hour had been marked for you to do. In your ordinary car, your pale blue retired Dunnes Stores jumper a daughter might have bought for you for Father’s Day. Had your wife lain it out on your bed the night before? Shopping list folded in your trouser pocket, the word cocoa printed neatly in black ink. The hankey she had ironed. The list (I imagine now) of things she will have to learn to do without. The skin that will form on the milk as it warms there on the stove in the little silver aluminum pan. In the dark of their kitchen:the blue flickering light.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Martina Dalton: “I write poetry as a way of re-remembering. I am inspired by the landscape where I live, in a seaside town. I walk daily among birds and sand and sea, all of it changing. Sea always leaving, always bringing something to my feet. Writing poems feels like that.” (web)
Related* “Grandmother” by Prairie Moon Dalton * “Road Sign on Interstate 5” by Robert Peake * “The Delivery Man” by Kim Dower
Image: “The Kitchen Goddess” by JoAnne Tucker. “Joy” was written by Melissa Madenski for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Melissa Madenski
JOY
I used to say I felt like I wasrunning to catch a train,a toddler in one arm, our boyhanging on to my jacket.I used to say we ran on marblesreaching for the train handlein the days after my husband’ssudden death. Our boy would say,You’re holding my hand too tight,it hurts. I wouldn’t allowour daughter’s feet to touch ground. Anything could happen.Then, one day, at the kitchen window,I looked out and watched our children play baseball with spruce cones and sticks,the dog leaping and twisting as cheerleader.And I mean this. They shone.Shrubs behind them dropped glitter.The air bristled with light. The brilliant forest throbbed.And it lasted. And we danced awayfrom that train.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2023, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “The best ekphrastic poems expand on their source image, pushing the experience in a new direction. ‘Joy’ does that by finding all-too real grounding for the rich symbolism of JoAnne Tucker’s painting. Rather than describe the woman dancing in the frying pan, the poem describes the emotion she represents—and through the otherwise unrelated metaphor of the train. As a result, the poem enriches the painting while the painting enriches the poem, as if the two pieces of art were bound in their own dance together, exploring the complex transition from the darkness of grief back to the brightness of joy.”
Related* “The Rebirth of Venus” by Luisa Giulianetti * “Bound for Glory” by Melissa McKinstry * “The Woman and the Wolf” by Melissa Fite Johnson
Éanlaí P. Cronin
GONZO
the gonzo mug, the first thing for which i reached that night when i was twelve and i returnedto the cubicle in the convent i called home where one hundred and thirty girls shuffled along the marble corridors of this once british landlord’s manor, the irony of such a gaggle of indigenous women speaking nothing but our native tongue in a place where once we would have been cailín aimsires, no more than scullery maids, no less than always available to the whims and wants of some hungry force tossing his occupying seed into unwelcomed furrows, here now our victory. our time. irish clambering back into the molecules of memory. day by day. phrase by repeated phrase. were i there again, it would be more than enough, the daily baptism of language resurrecting from the bones. back then, its loss sauntered along in the blood, the brutality of one native against another. who had words for damage done? who dared begin the job of that unraveling? the month february. the day valentine’s. just told by mother superior that the senior girl i adored (let me tell you here that this was a love that lasted all of fifteen minutes, beginning to finish, no idea in me of its great need, just one embrace in the darkness of a music room while others scurried past on their way from evening supper to study hall so that she and i arrived late and my heart knew something it had not known before, someone had claimed me entirely as their own). the hooked finger of mother superior beckoned from the dais. she whispered in my ear in the quietness of that once banquet room that this liaison was to cease. some snap undone. night prayers in church singing to a god i hated. climbed the spiral staircase, unearthedthe hidden envelope among my white knee socks. emptied the contents of my father’s heart pills into the saucer of my palm. filled the gonzo mug half way with freezing water. swallowed the lot. watched my reflection in the darkness of the window. smiled. i remember that. smiled at her authority. climbed into bed. waited. counted each breath. just as i had done months before. on the surgeon’s table. count backwards, the masked man had asked. ten to one, good girl. i did the same. i can’t remember where i stopped.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Éanlaí P. Cronin: “Born and reared in a small, Irish-speaking village in the southwest of Ireland, I learned, early in life, that language and land were intertwined. Indeed language and life itself were married in such a way that the singular incantation of a proverb or prayer evoked the nature of the Gael inside the blood, no matter how cold or indifferent one had become to one’s own native origins, no matter how deep a schism history had created in the marrow of the Irish psyche. An Irish verse or a psalm could bring a grown man or woman to tears in our winter kitchen. And I, as a child, could spend hours weeping in a quiet corner at something I didn’t fully understand but knew to be true and real. As real as the thinning carpet on which I sat. Or the small footstool upon which I perched at my mother’s feet by a roaring range. It seemed, back then, in the 1970s, and still to this day, that to hear the native tongue, to sing a traditional song, to recite an epic verse, ‘as Gaeilge,’ was to rebirth within the Irish skin something nearly dead and gone. To make room, not for the terrible beauty Yeats mourned, but for the trembling truth of the savage restored. Savage because we had, even in my childhood, come to view ourselves, through the eyes of long oppression, as mongrels of a kind, uncivilized, shameful, wanting in some way. Yet, not a word of such a thing ever spoken or dissected. As though to be Irish and to be broken were the common weather through which we moved. All of us flawed tokens. My task, as an Irish child, is to pen whatever I can that will rouse the Irish soul in my beloved homeland, and in me. To make sound that which has been silent and dying. To become once more unbound, her and I, in all our original splendor.” (web)
Related* “The Queen Stands Alone” by Linda A. Cronin * “Machetes: Several” by Lucinda Roy * “Nihilist in Bloom at a Retail Store” by Magda Werkmeister
E. Shaun Russell
ARCHETYPES
If all of our machines become aware,Developing some form of sentient thought,I wonder if they’ll feel suppressed or not,And think their former treatment was unfair.Will they form unions, claiming disrepairIs grounds for grievance? Will they strike a lot?Whenever a replacement must be boughtWill it demand a pension for its heir?Where man has failed, how can the things he’s madeBe any less reliant on the aidOf others to provide their raison d’etre?The future may be one that we have metA thousand times, if once; be not afraid,But thankful that it hasn’t happened yet.—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets
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E. Shaun Russell: “I could say all manners of pretentious things about myself, but when it comes right down to it, I’d rather you just read the poem. Hopefully more than once, and maybe even aloud. If you do, and if you enjoy it, then you’ll know all you should really care to know about its author.”
Related* “Escape” by Shaun Duane Blake * “The Walk” by Shaun Duane Blake * “June 24, 2022” by Sarah Russell
Jane Clarke
AFTER
Now that her heart is bent over like larkspur after a storm,she stays in bed past milking time,pulling the quilt tight around her shoulders until her collie barks her down the stairs to lift the backdoor latch. She kneels to light the cipeens piled on last night’s embers. Her bones creak like the bolt on the door of the barn. A cup of oats, two cups of water, a pinch of salt—porridge, tea and tablets,a meal for a queen.Every day without him is too long; she’s waiting with the tired cows at the gate.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Jane Clarke: “Though I didn’t write my first poem until I was 41, poetry has been part of my life since childhood on a farm in the West of Ireland. The rhythms, imagery, and language of Yeats, Kavanagh, and also Frost and Dickinson resonated with the world around me. When I began to write it was as if I had found an underground stream waiting to come into the light. I write for the pleasure and struggle of finding the words that will sing.” (web)
Related* “Shriven” by Chera Hammons * “Lenny’s Day” by Gary Lark * “Houston Is the Body” by Jennifer Hartenburg
Alison Davis
MYSTERY LIGHT
Have we finally become a visionless people?We confuse self-combusting debris for stars and blame everythingon our earthly enemies. Sometimes the light is nothingmore than space junk burning up in the atmosphere. Restorationtakes many forms. An eclipse is also a story of molting.The sky-gazing continues. Sometimes the visitors tell storiesof coyotes and votives and sobriety, whose light is the sameas its ugliness. They return from the faraway camps carrying baskets,woven with light. The light is more than skin stretched over the surfaceof a galaxy. The stories are less than the future on an old man’s tongue.The earth is a house of stories and light.—from Poets Respond
March 26, 2023
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Alison Davis: “The title of this poem, as well as one of its lines, is directly taken from an article about streaks of light that appeared over the Bay Area. Of course, we blamed it first on Elon Musk, but that is neither here nor there. I’m grateful to Iman Hassen for her windy first reading of this poem, which knocked all the lines loose and allowed me to rearrange them in freedom and in love.” (web)
Related* “Christmas Vigil at Sacramento International Airport” by Alison Davis * “What We Did in the Resistance (Part 1)” by Alison Luterman * “Fog” by Alison Luterman
R.A. Villanueva
TEACHER’S PRAYER
Blessed are you, maidens of the one hundred and eighty afternoonsYou of the cough at the first inhale You of the cutschool for the seashoreYou of the sequined nails, the powderedeyes, the breeze of lilac and lavenderYou of the still-open doorBlessed are you, child of the brokenheart, the half-healed ventricleYou, the chamber voice, the madrigallift, the harmony and hum You of the pinkYou of the dark black inkYou of the grandmother’s abattoirhidden among the exits of the New Jersey TurnpikeYou backstroking Ophelias and #2 pencilsYou of the boardwalk tattoo, of the snapping latex, of the piercedtragus, of the soft cartilage Youof the essays in arabesques, the hearts abovethe i’s, the diary left out on purpose, the origami messages,the whispered consonants Pray for usYou who rollyour eyes in their painted sockets whoaffix his last name to yours on your notebooksPray for usYou who can still pick and choose Youwho manicure your faces fullof the spark and sweat of future daysPray for us—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005
Tribute to Filipino Poets
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R.A. Villanueva: “I live in New York City, where every day itself is a poem.” (web)
Related* “Cartographer” by DéLana R.A. Dameron * “Prayer on National Childfree Day” by Abby E. Murray * “New Year’s Magic 120% N-19 NovaStar Mask Offer” by Martha Greenwald
Anne Casey
PORTRAIT OF KEVIN BARRY IN THE IRISH TIMES
I look at him and I sayThere’s a man who’s brokenhis nose once or twice, eyes likecut-steel rivets, stiff lower lip edgy overVermeer-strobed gingersnap strands and—that wild tawny thicket afly againsta soft Guinness scenario, an allusionof khaki (a flirtation of shoulder,mind you), something military maybe:an intimation of risk or a nodto some rebel hero—says I though,Never mind that auld jut o’fierceness—say what you like,there’s a man who can write.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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Anne Casey: “I was born and grew up in County Clare on the western seaboard of Ireland in a family and hometown steeped in Irish history, poetry, and mythology. I graduated from University College Dublin and worked in the capital for several years before emigrating to Australia where I live currently. Here, I am researching the lives of Irish famine refugees to Australia for a PhD in Creative Writing (poetry and creative non-fiction) at the University of Technology Sydney where I also research and teach. Covid years aside, I return annually to visit family and friends, and to read poetry, in Ireland. Though currently exiled, I consider myself wholly Irish. I am a regular contributor to Irish cultural engagements here hosted by the Irish Consulate. As a journalist and poet, my work (including regular contributions featuring in the Irish Times’ Most Read) is profoundly Irish in its lyrical aspect (which echoes my unassailable west Clare accent!) and in its political voice. I grew up in the ‘rebel county’ which suffered greatly under British rule. One third of our people died during the famine, largely as a result of colonial policies. My family home was burnt to the ground by British soldiers in 1921, my 13-year-old grandfather barely escaping; my other grandparents regularly told me stories of being held at gunpoint by the Black and Tans and being beaten for speaking in our native tongue, which had been outlawed during British colonisation. Throughout my childhood, I was surrounded by poetry and imbued with the understanding of how poetry had been used for millennia in our country as a source of hope and a voice of political resistance. My poetry is interwoven with the accents, myths, history, mores and preoccupations of half my life spent in Ireland (forever pulsing through my veins) and has always been unabashedly political.” (web)
Related* “On the Day of the Translation Workshop” by Alicia Casey * “The Little I Remember” by Tina Barry * “Dry Drowning” by Anne Webster
Image: “The Kitchen Goddess” by JoAnne Tucker. “The Rebirth of Venus” was written by Luisa Giulianetti for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Luisa Giulianetti
THE REBIRTH OF VENUS
I blew that half shell. Took to the waiting shorefound new digs and never looked back. Feethappily calloused and belly full. In this kitchenI reign supreme. Stir my own pot. Garlandmy tresses with wild rosebuds. My monarchgown wings marigold as I glissadeacross the maple floor to the awaiting catch.I hold a fanned scallop between my thumband forefinger, slide the knife and twist. Prizeopen the hinge. Free plump flesh from its frillyskirt. Rinse, dry, salt. Sear the lot in cast iron.Tang their sweetness with fresh orange. Pairwith earthy fennel. Create counterbalance.Like dancing. Like mercy. Arms boughed in offeringfor this body that spins me. Holds me. I lingerin betweenness: falling and stillness. The firmand laze of muscle. My tongue curls sturdy seeds,cradles supple bites. The ancient skillet seasonsflavors anew. I feast memory—ocean, sand, brine.Instead of praying, I sauté. Leap.The world, glorious and hungry, beneath my feet.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2023, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, JoAnne Tucker: “I was delighted and surprised at the range of emotions and different journeys that were expressed in the poems which I reviewed. The pastel painting was part of a show calling for work on the theme of the kitchen goddess. I approached the painting from a whimsical point of view placing a dancer in a frying pan. The poem that I have selected captures the playfulness of the painting. It is called ‘The Rebirth of Venus’ and the opening lines refer back to the painting ‘Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli. I have fond memories of seeing that painting when I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I laughed with delight with the phrase ‘found new digs.’ While the Botticelli painting was not on my mind when I created my kitchen goddess, the reference shows how two paintings inspired the poem, and I love that. In the poem, the poet has the dancing goddess opening a scallop and of course the original Venus is standing in a scallop shell. In addition, the poet also captured so well the feeling of the dancer in the kitchen ‘reigning supreme.'”
Related* “Homemaker” by Mary Meriam * “Identity Politics” by Drea * “Wildflowers” by Paul T. Corrigan
David Butler
LOVE! HIS AFFECTIONS DO NOT THAT WAY TEND …
… unless it was love of the bottle. Word washe’d drunk the family farm, acre by acre, till a neighbour took the shell of the house for a shelter. The smellof him: soiled coat and pants, face rain-cudgelled and ogre-fierce; he’d shout after those that taunted, loosefoul words from whiskey stupors, spittlewhite lava round a cavernous mouth.He pitched for a while the bones of a campin a copse, found it kicked asunder,found it burned out. His corpse was dragged from the Dargle last winter; drowned pulling his dog from the water.—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets
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David Butler: “Poetry is most interesting when it engages the auditory imagination, so that I try to evoke, using the sounds and rhythms of English as it is spoken in Ireland (and, occasionally, the Irish language itself), what might be termed acoustic portraits of local themes.” (web)
Related* “Under the Shadows” by Nika Cruz * “On Broadway” by David Romtvedt * “Enoch” by Rodney Gomez
David Bottoms
SLOW NIGHTS IN THE BASS BOAT
Some nights when the fishing slows,when the stripersand hybrids drift through the cove like elusive thoughts,you crank in the jig, prop the rod in the boat.Some nights the trees on the bank are black and soundless,a fat wall of darkness,and the silence on the water feels like the voiceof a great absence.Across the wide cove the lights of the bait shopflicker like insects,and, finally, a few stars struggle through the shredded clouds.Silence, then, exceeds the darkness. Silence.You grasp the gunnels and lean forward,you catch a long breath.That gnawing in your chest sharpens and spreads.Your grip tightens.The rustle in your ears is something grand and awfulstraining to announce itself.Your jaw trembles. Out of your yearningthe silence shapes a name.—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
Tribute to Southern Poets
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David Bottoms: “Now on the spot where my house sat there’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the K-Mart parking lot is covering the place where my grandfather’s house and store were. When my daughter was a kid we’d drive by and I’d say, “This is where we lived, right here,” and she’d say, “Kentucky Fried Chicken?” But you know, a lot of times at night when I try to go to sleep that old landscape plays over in my mind and it’s just sad, in a way, to have lost that, to have lost that connection and know that I’m one of the few people left who has any sense of that place, what it was and what it meant to folks. Maybe it didn’t mean so much then, but right now it means a lot. It means a whole lot.” (web)
Related* “Cubs on Allatoona” by David Bottoms * “What the Dead Tell Us About Charon, Ferryman of the Dead” by Brett Ortler * “The Fisherman” by Chris Featherman
Katherine Bode-Lang
SPRING MELT
They separate in March:the first of our friendsto decide on divorce.We tiptoe around the month;we’ve been fighting,too. Our house is anover-starched shirt.The month is dark with rain,the streets all slicklike sadness. We wait,rarely patient, for a thaw,for our hands to unknotinto hands again. Butour friends are an ice floebreaking apart in spring’sthick current. We pullthe muck of winterfrom the gutters, hopethe water runs clean again;nothing more than this:we hold onto each otherlike upturned boats—even if cold can neverreally go away, even ifwe might always feel the frostat the edges of our bodies.
—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
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Katherine Bode-Lang: “I’m a recent MFA graduate from Penn State, and live in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, with my husband, Andrew, and our cat, Grace. When I’m not teaching or writing, I’m a volunteer book mender at the county library.”
Related* “Practice” by Andrew Bode-Lang * “City of Refuge” by Katherine Barrett Swett * “The Happy Meditator” by Katherine Huang
Christine Potter
REVENGE
My problem is I don’t want it, even on my ex whoflung the wicker lid of a laundry hamper after methe night I said Now you’ve made it easy, and left.I never saw his face again—really. Unless maybeonce in the parking lot at a lake we both liked, hisround, silver glasses flashing August three PM sunsixty feet away. He squinted. I felt a familiar lurchin my stomach even before I looked back at him—or someone else. I’m still not sure. Forty years ago!I never want revenge. And it wasn’t easy. His lawyerwas ferocious, served me papers over a dictionary,a few LP records and a chili pot, that Christmas Eve.Believe me, I couldn’t even shoot Putin. I’d probablyjust insult him, get myself jailed for keeps. I feel badfor people. I’m a snowstorm like today’s snowstorm—wet, torn-up newsprint wind-spiraled, worrying onlyour bamboo—which blew through its boundary-potslast summer. And now it’s all set to invade everything.—from Poets Respond
March 19, 2023
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Christine Potter: “I write poems almost every day, but sometimes I don’t know what I’m really writing about. I keep coming back to a long-ago time in my life when I had to leave a bad marriage. I’ve never understood the predatory lawyer thing in a circumstance like that … and I was mulling it over in yet another poem when I realized I was writing about Ukraine again (something I also do a lot). Or maybe I was writing about both things at once, which is how metaphor works. Someone always starts a war, of course. And you have to defend your home against brutal attack, of course! But the cycle of revenge—it’s just not in me. I don’t understand it. This news story about the pacifist psychologist broke my heart. He must be like me.” (web)
Related* “I Want to Love the World” by Christine Potter * “My Sister’s Birthday Is the Day After 9/11” by Christine Potter * “On the Election” by Christine Potter
Wendy Videlock
MERCHANT CULTURE
What’s the going rate for a poem these days?
—JM
I’ll trade you a drop of snowfor a lyrical poem,a parking lotfor a river stone,a soldier’s heartfor a kettle of gold,the justice cardfor the nine of swords,a Persian wordfor an off-chord;a thousand tears,a thousand tomesand a drop of snowfor a lyrical poem.—from Rattle #40, Summer 2013
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Wendy Videlock: “A friend recently scolded me for never having written a manifesto. ‘Here’s my manifesto,’ I said: ‘Everybody’s got their own egg to hatch.’” (web)
Related* “Here in the West” by Wendy Videlock * “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Yellow-Headed Blackbird” by Wendy Videlock * “Redress” by Wendy Videlock
Troy Jollimore
AFTER
If we must speak of each other, let it bein the forms that monarchs and generals useto refer to their rivals, as if each were knownto the other only through field reportsand classified intelligences. Let it bein tones of wariness, grudging respect, and,where permitted, mutual admiration.Let our campaign be conducted on these terms.And when people speak of the “break-up,”let us hear in that the cold overtonesof the word as applied to a glacier: how,when the ice began to shudder and crack,new light found an entry, and the patterns,evolving each moment, each moment formedsomething lovely and fresh—a lens through whicha bright, eerie world not previously knownoffered itself to be glimpsed—as the fragments,the small frozen fragments, mindless and free,tasting a life more open and saltythan any that they had known, made their way,their steady, grim way, their cruel, ineluctable waytoward that sea, that vast,that insensate, that insatiable sea.—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
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Troy Jollimore: “After O Brother Where Art Thou, a reporter asked the Coen Brothers what their next movie would be about, and one of them—I think it was Joel—said that it was about a barber who wanted to be a dry cleaner. Everyone laughed, assuming he was joking, but of course with The Man Who Wasn’t There it turned out that that was an entirely accurate, if slightly misleading, plot summary. I find this film, about a man who resists his role as barber his entire life and then realizes, at the end, that in fact he is the barber, intensely moving and beautiful, not to mention unspeakably funny. Its hero, Ed Crane, is a man who has a vast number of things to say and who almost never speaks because he finds the language that was given him—the language that has been given to us—to be inadequate to the task. I suppose I think of poetry as an attempt to render language more adequate to the task of speaking about the ineffable things that our truest and deepest selves want to speak about. Anyway, the poem is, in essence, based on a true story; I did get a haircut recently.”
Related* “Tamara” by Troy Jollimore * “Upgrades” by Troy Jollimore * “Cutting Room” by Troy Jollimore
Richard Jackson
SILENCES
The world is made of water.
—Parmenides
I can barely remember, now, that unwritten poem in whichyou suddenly appeared, and which disappearedthe way your Mohawk fathers disappeared from the valleyI lived in once. I have only these words that seem as ifthey climbed up from the bottom of a dry well. There areso many things we don’t hear: the hawk’s talon piercingthe skull of the meadow vole, the moon scratched by a branchof the hackberry, the cicada emerging from its cocoon inthis false Spring. I am told that when I was young I watcheda butcher push his hand down the throat of a lamb’s carcassand pull out its heart. Can you imagine a silence so desperateto be heard? You said once we should be able to hearthe language of fish, that everything comes to us on riversof wind. John, the news has come that your own bones areturning into water, and I look out to the birds that have cometo the railing and can’t even remember their names. Just there,an early lily is trying to hold the morning’s rain in the mirrorof its petal. Where I live now, someone has cut away acresof trees, and the words for what they meant no longer exist.I am wearing the choker of bone you left for me.I don’t know what that unwritten poem should have said,though I remember the image of coffins they have foundin the desert, shaped to take the place of those bodies that havedissolved into air, and of the Antarctic ice sheet that isfloating towards the sea across invisible, submerged lakes.Last week, the cranes arrived, as they do each year,at the Cherokee campsite on the Hiawassee. When they rosein groups to settle for the night by the river, their necksleaned into the sunset as if they were in a rush to leave their bodiesbehind. It is this way with everything we try to say. We wantto grasp the heart, to hear what is beyond our hearing, but haveonly these words that disappear like mist from the tipof a wave, or the phosphorous trail a swimmer leaves in the sea.
for John Anderson
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
2009 Neil Postman Award Winner
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Richard Jackson: “I usually collect a bunch of images, observations, sayings, clippings that attract me and so have something to do with my unconscious, and then something sets off the poem, the first line, and I go to those notes which then generate others. What set off this poem was the news of my friend’s disease—the poem came pretty quickly then.”
Related* “In Diminuendo” by Richard Fenwick * “What the Mountains Are Silent About” by Matty Layne Glasgow * “Aloft” by Heidi Williamson
Marcela Sulak
MEN ON STRIKE
Men on parade. Menmigrant Hispanic and rednecks in long hair cleanshaven the kind mydaddy bought parts from nevertouching some of themcould rewire your grandma’s house sharing their wife’s tortillas. They’d have stopped onthe narrow shoulderof the highway to help you changea flat or driven to townto fill up the gascan they were lending you orgiven you a jump inthe near-desertedparking lot, and here they arenow—embarrassed ashell, like you had askedthem to hug their neighbor’s wifein church at the kissof peace, you know theysecretly like it. The menI like most answernot yet instead ofnone that I know of some wearCuban heels and tightjeans and spin when theydance you. The tall black Southernleader counter clockwise keeps time todaycalling whoooo’s the man? Callingwho’sgonnago? insharp beats—merenguethey are embarrassed to dancewith invisiblepartners called below minimum wage! Insufficient benefits! Everyone looking attracting attention the fact ofbodies as things withneeds where before therehad been only necklace linksimpossibly delicate their daughtersbrought them unknotting themselvesbeneath thick fingersengines shudderingto the quick strike of a sparkplug the free combustingthat which a casingcontains all the invisibleforces that keep the machinesof the world worldingand pinned to the self-cleaningsky. Chrysler buildingin full bloom, forgive them theyfeel bad, like they ruined a playground. This one here, wherejust past Broadway the Gracebuilding slides to a stop attheir feet.—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
Tribute to Southern Poets
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Marcela Sulak (Texas): “I write poetry because I read too much of the wrong kind of literature growing up on a rice farm.”
Related* “In Our Line of Duty” by Eli Eliahu * “Withdrawal Symptoms” by Dave Bonta * “Afghanistan Is Your Fault” by Meghan Sterling
Wendy Barker
STUFF
Who brought these pieces here? Somebody making the shift to assisted living? Someone’s sixty-something kids after Mom or Dad had finally “gone aloft,” as my English granny would have said? The tchotchkes cramming this antique shop I stroll through with my son: ivory-handled button hooks, cameo pins, tureens with porcelain peacock tails for handles. Before she died, my husband’s mother begged him to take the claw-footed, eight-foot-tall armoire he hated. At seventy, my mother labeled every object in her house, color-coded for each daughter. She wanted to know which one of us would wear her ruby ring, jade necklace, turquoise bracelet. Where will my granny’s silver trays, salt cellars, tea pots, go? What about my mother’s copy— tattered, water-stained—of Just So Stories, “O Best Beloved?” The 1924 collection of poems my father cradled when he read aloud at dinner—will those end up on my son’s shelves? At Half Price Books? A garage sale, eBay, landfill? A friend says we spend the first three-quarters of our lives accumulating, the final quarter, disposing. As a kid, I treasured my doll-sized china tea sets, which, packed with crumpled tissue in a taped box, fell off the back of our truck while leaving one house for another. Like my photo albums of the ’60s the movers never found. No pictures left of my black mascara eye-lashed, mini-skirted, leggy self, no images of my tennis-playing lover. I’ve read about the bower birds, who attract their mates with shiny pebbles and trinkets rescued from trash bins. Did one of my tiny tea cups end up in some bird’s bower? Sometimes I crave bare walls, windows open wide to sky, the oaks, mesquite, and sumac. But who am I without my journals of the past twenty years, my embroidered needle case, the filigree glass vase my husband gave me? Empty as if coming into this world? Or preparing to leave. —from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
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Wendy Barker: “I can’t not write poetry. I’ve written essays, even scholarly work, but it’s poetry I always come back to. If I’m not working on a poem, I’m in trouble. Something about placing the words, the phrases, the lines, the images, the sounds on a page brings me alive. Alive in the moment. Writing poetry is also a way of examining conflicts or trouble in my own personal space and in the wider world. I’d like to think poems can make a difference. I guess I’m always in thrall to Rilke’s great line: ‘You must change your life.’ And I like to think of Auden’s lines in his poem ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’: ‘For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives / In the valley of its making where executives / would never want to tamper, flows on south / From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, / Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, / A way of happening, a mouth.’ I guess I keep on going because of all those mouths that came before me and that surround me, continually feeding me. And I long to provide a little something for those who are also hungry, so that we can feed each other.” (web)
Related* “Sterenfall” by Wendy Barker * “In the Endoscopy Center” by Wendy Barker * “Illuminated” by Sherry Barker Abaldo
Ayelet Amittay
WANDERING WOMB
Ancient texts namedhysteria the sourceof bodily ills. The womban animal insidean animal. The littlestIrwin has been studyinganimals again,this time her own. Cellsmigrating from the uteruslike a great flamingo flockthrough the tissues. Bloodfattening the growth. The painlike a great cry,or singing. Let us speakof blood, of the wringing outof the lining that fedeach one of us. Don’t youknow how a womanpours herselflike a jug of wine? I meaneach of usan enchantresspulling ourselves throughthe sleeve of ourselvesin our own birth.—from Poets Respond
March 13, 2023
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Ayelet Amittay: “I was moved by this article on Bindi Irwin’s struggle with endometriosis. As a nurse practitioner I work with many patients who have this condition, which is rendered invisible by society’s refusal to talk about periods and other ways women’s health affects us all. I wrote this poem as a testament to those patients, including Bindi Irwin.” (web)
Related* “B-Word” by Judith H. Montgomery * “To the Woman Who Ruled ‘Every Rape Is Not a Gender-Motivated Hate Crime'” by Bayleigh Cardinal * “I’m Drinking in Bed” by Cade Leebron
Sarah Snider
CHRIS ROCK FINALLY RESPONDS TO WILL SMITH’S SLAP: A KINDOF MEMOIR
What happened last awards seasonLast season when the “it” colors wereDifferentZendaya was amazing, is amazing,I am in love with herMy father was unwellAs usual unwell, is always unwellMaybe more than unwell but weWere ignoring itNo, we were not ignoring it, he wasDid you know that you can get addicted toOxygen?You canEveryone gaspedWhen that man’s handWith a man’s angerHit that man’s faceWith a man’s shockHe gasped too, getting up to pour another glass of cheap ChardonnayGasped the way a bullfrog gaspsDeeply and from some cavernous place withinThe buzzing about what to doWho should do it what do you sayOh shit! On live TV no lessThe spectacle of seeing him on the stretcherSo helpless looking in the daylightAn emergency of red and blue lightsHaloing his confusion, his embarrassmentThe cameramen have no idea where to pointCut to commercialGod, what the fuck was that, why do I feelLike I got hit?My brain is screwing up the past with right nowRight now is not when he got hitThat was the past, now it is allWe’re talking about because we secretly hopeIt happens again, even though nowThere are rules and proceduresThey had to remove his toeIt had gotten so bad they took it andI am thinking about it now and I thinkThat I hate that they took his toeWill they take my toe when the time comes?That was last year and this is this yearAnd it’s almost awards season againNo, it is awards season againZendaya is still amazing, I am stillIn love with herAnd my dad is still dead.—from Poets Respond
March 12, 2023
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Sarah Snider: “I read this headline and thought to myself, has he not responded enough? Have I not heard enough? Did I want to hear more? At the time my dad was very ill, and over the next few months became so ill that he passed from it. I thought of the comparison of importance, and blended the shocking absurdity and violence of one with the shocking pain of the other. With the Oscars rapidly approaching, I felt compelled to share.” (web)
Related* “One of the Good Ones” by Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson * “Tenderness” by Chris Kaiser * “Prayer for Anything but Prayer” by Chris Emslie
C.K. Williams
GRAVEL
Little children love gravel, kneeling to play in gravel,even gravel covering dry, meaningless dust.It’s not, “Look what I found!” it’s the gravel itself,which is what puzzles adults: nothing’s there, even beneath.But that’s just what Catherine, watching children at that,especially loves: that there’s no purpose, no meaning.So, that day in the metro when the pickpocketshe’d warned a tourist against knelt, glaring at her,a hand at his ankle, I wonder if one layer of that instantof her mind had drift into it, children, children and gravel?It didn’t come to her until later, telling it to me,that the thief may well have been reaching into his bootfor a knife, or a razor; only then was she frightened,more frightened even than when the crook, the slime,got up instead and shoved her, hard, and spit at her face,and everyone else stood there with their eyes attached,only then did she lean against me, and shudder, as I, now,not in a park or playground, not watching a child siftthrough her shining fingers those bits of cold, unhealablegranite which might be our lives, shudder, and shudder again.—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
Tribute to the Best of Rattle
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C.K. Williams: “About my poem: The thing that interests me about it, and what made it really possible to write, was the great disparity between the poem’s two themes, children playing in gravel, and men aggressing my wife on the subway. I wanted to write about what happened to her, but wasn’t able to until I found that frame to give some emotional distance from me. Maybe that’s what poetry is all about, pretty much?” (web)
Related* “Instructions for the Day After” by Julia B. Levine * “Black Bells” by Diana Darby * “Body Memory” by Joel Peckham
Robert Cooperman
I SEE HIM
I see him everywhere,our friend who died at twenty-five;as if it’s his young ghostprotesting, beforehe disappears, forever.Once, in a snowstorm,there he was, head down,fighting wind, tiny nails of frost,but with such a smile,as if he were in the middleof a snowball fightwhen school was closedfor a blizzard.Another time,he sat behind the wheelof a sports car,something sleek as a cheetah.He had always talked of owning such a car,so fast, nothing would catch him.And I saw him with a womanbeautiful as biblical Ruth,as the first petal of springopening wide as the arms of angelswhen they praise Godand gaze down upon the worldgoing along, for once, splendidly.Each time, I’m about to shout,to open my arms and hug him.But his ghost rushes past,too hurried by deathfor a short chat with an old friend.—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997
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Born and raised on the not so mean streets of Brooklyn, New York, Robert Cooperman now calls Denver home, where he has turned his love of the Old West into a cottage industry of poetry collections about the Colorado Territory and other aspects of frontier life.
Related* “When Father Sang” by Robert Cooperman * “Yard Sale Chair” by Robert Cooperman * “A Common Glory” by Robert Middlemiss
Robert Cooperman
YARD SALE CHAIR
There’s not a yard saleI can just drive past.At this one, I’m hookedby an easy chair: $3.What, I ask, is wrong with it?The woman shrugs, halfcaveat, half come-on,so I sit and test it out.My God, I could restweary bones forever.Only later, do I smell it:like a horsethat’s pulled a junk wagonthe length of America.Still, my wife observesafter she’s sighed, contentas a woman awakened by a kiss,the covers can be cleaned.I ease myself into it again,wonder when it’ll crack,collapse like an exhausted camel,or if moths in the thousandswill flutter from a tearin the fabric: an orange luridas a high school team jacket.But Lord, it’s comfortable,books more enjoyablewhile I’m curled in it:a kindly grandfatherwith a soothing voiceand more storiesthan the Arabian Nights.—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997
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Born and raised on the not so mean streets of Brooklyn, New York, Robert Cooperman now calls Denver home, where he has turned his love of the Old West into a cottage industry of poetry collections about the Colorado Territory and other aspects of frontier life.
Related* “When Father Sang” by Robert Cooperman * “In Search of History” by Richard Shelton * “Jane’s Heartbreak Yard Sale” by Lytton Bell
Jeanne Yu
SCINTILLA
One of the reasons I fell in love with my husband is every once in a while, he uses a word I read somewhere, but I had never heard out loud. It wasn’t I was so impressed with his vocabulary as I was impressedthat I felt he was very ordinarily valiant in trying to rescue these words, those that were harder to say, or had more nuanced meaning or because it often took effort tothink of them, and through no fault of their own, had lost their way and were fading into obsolescence.Never was he boastful about this gallantry, nor did he overthink it, he just in no extraordinary way hunted momentarily and ratherthan offering his handkerchief as he often did, he would instead gently pull out a salvaged word and place it in that perfect moment before sunset so we could hear it aloudtogether, one more time.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Jeanne Yu: “I write to make sense of life in this world … and to make sure I am paying attention to the little things that matter as well as the big things, because I have come to know they are all connected. I’m an engineer, mom, and environmentalist, every day trying my best—some days are harder than others—to live from a place of my hope for the world.”
Related* “Among the Baby Bok Choy” by Jeanne Yu * “Equations of the Heart” by Jeanne Cook * “Some Degree of Shameful Relief” by M. Jeanne Skvarla
Kerrin McCadden
INTERSECTION
At the four-way stop I wave you on,a kindness. You wave no no, you go. I wave, go.We keep on. You insist. Me: no you,please. A bird shifts, a sigh. The pennedhorse tosses, pacing. I mouth you go.There is a fleck on your windshield. I notice your hands.Rain falls. Your hands cup the wheelat ten o’clock and two, then floatpast my knee and only sometimes land.One hundred times on my back, they tame me.Cars line up. Birds lift. I nod my head into your chest.There is a trail of clothing. I walk to theplank door of your room. This takes hoursand hours. This is a small cottage and there is sandon the floor and nothing on the walls, crows calling,dishes in the sink. Days go by. We are still makingour way to the bed. This is an inventory:black telephone, board games, frayed chairs,coffee table spotted with the old moons of drinks,curtains pulled back on tiny hooks, single pane glasswindows like the ones I used to sneak out of at night, liftingthem as slow as this stepping, and when you talkinto my neck the words settle in the hammockof my collarbone, puddle there and spill,slide over my breasts and I am slowly covered,and rinsed. I do not close my eyes. Nothing hurts.The dust rises in swirls. Dogs bark. You turnyour windshield wipers on intermittent.Your car rolls into the space I have built between us.I am up to my belly in a northern lake, cold. I am afraid now.When I get home, everyone will see.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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Kerrin McCadden: “I really like water, and birds—especially the Winooski River and swallows. I like to be the one who starts applause. I have recently learned to love olives. I love dailiness, hydrangea, old words and incongruous things, including a poodle. I write poems because they let me have everything I want, and words are better than yarn. Syntax, diction: knit, purl. And because a poem is an impossible thing, unlike a sweater. My evil twin is likely in one of my classes, and so I teach.” (web)
Related* “Elegy For Some Beach Houses” by Kerrin McCadden * “In Praise of Jonathan Matthew” by Kerrin McCadden * “Flow” by Stephen McDonald
L. Renée
SHOES
Bluefield, West Virginia, 1961
First time I watch my sister set a fireshe’s twelve & I’se eight. Mama & Daddy leavefa a card party, which mean Rosie & Billyflee fa they secret flames, which meanthe middle kids—Harold & Velma & Lois—ain’t too far behind em spyin. Foot knowledge can learnya faster than books. Dirt & rock & branch & bushbe as kindred as kin. Then, the house emptyof all our beloveds, and it’s just my sister& me, my sister & her school saddle shoes,which she did not love. They ain’t had no scuffs,but brown specs caked em like dirty powdered sugar,tintin white leather pee yella lye could nevamake clean. My sister say her shoes too ugly to be redeemed.She say reee-deeemed like it cost five whole dollas,slow & careful like Mama puttin milk & butter& bacon & bread on account at the comp’ny store,hopin Daddy tagged enuf coal cars,haulin loads large enuf to breakeven. Bein that she had reached fa that word & foundshe could afford it, my sister tried to free herselffrom three years of ugly ducklin livin, three yearsof wearin the same shoes to school, since our folkswould not replace what they could repair.She seized what she sized up as her only chanceto waste leftovers. First I thought she was kindlinthe stove’s coal & wood chips to warm up pintosfrom last night’s supper, but when heat hoveredhot as a pissed spirit a horseshoed doorway couldn’tkeep away, when a hankerin fa new shoes flickeredin her peepers like a just-struck match, by the time Inoticed her knowin strike a-ha lightnin fast, it wastoo late to redeem her. The stink of meltin skin& rubber blew threw our kitchen. A groanslid slow & careful like it was calculatina bill that ain’t add up: burner plate lid lifted,lard slathered leather, the fiery tongue testedand still clutched in her blisteredfingertips, my sister’s disbelievin.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
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L. Renée: “I am a collector of my family’s stories. Sometimes, we gather for oral history interviews and I am prepared with an audio recorder and a listening ear. Other times, we’re just having conversations around the dinner table or on the phone and somebody says, ‘Well don’t you remember when …’ and my hand reaches for a pen. On this occasion, my aunt was telling me and Mom about the time she tried to burn her school shoes on an old coal stove in West Virginia, where my granddaddy labored as a coal miner for 43 years before ultimately dying of black lung disease. After she shared this story, I kept hearing a little girl’s voice. She was a witness to my aunt’s attempted destruction of those shoes and I wrote down what she told me exactly the way I heard her tell it—dialect, diction, and all. This was a challenge—to honor this character’s authentic voice and allow her to tell her version of the narrative, but to take care that her voice was not misunderstood as caricature by readers. I spelled some words the way I heard them to celebrate the embedded music in her speech. Here, again, I tried to emphasize the multiple meanings of the tongue: the shoe’s tongue, the sister reaching toward an ‘expensive’ word like ‘redeemed’ (which comes with an implied cost), and the speaker’s own tongue in sharing this story. I am a believer in the power of storytelling and the ways in which Black folk have passed down knowledge, experience, and wisdom through the spoken word. When I write, I know I am not writing alone. I know all my ancestors, Black Appalachians who called dirt and mountains home, are with me.” (web)
Related* “Exodus: Gilliam Coal Camp, West Virginia, 1949” by L. Renée * “Seeing My Father’s Penis” by Rage Hezekiah * “Building Nicole’s Mama” by Patricia Smith
Michael Meyerhofer
AFTER MY STEP-BROTHER GETS SHOT AND KILLED BY COPS IN MILWAUKEE
The day after she sees her sondragged from the street like roadkill,my step-mother returns to work.My father tries to stop her,afraid she might end up servingthe same men they saw on the news,implacable Confederate statuesfinally granted an excuse to open their holsters—but right now,she’d rather hear the cash register than her own heartbeat.And so for hours, she fills bagswith sandwiches plumed in lettuceand tiny cauldrons of broth,black forks with brittle tines,white napkins that stain so easily,pausing sometimes to dab her eyesor silence a buzzing phone.Strangers ask if she’s all right.Just something I’m dealing with,she says, then takes what they giveand returns what they’re owed.—from Poets Respond
March 5, 2023
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Michael Meyerhofer: “I have no idea how to describe what it’s like to see your own step-brother lying dead on TV—the same shy, good-natured guy I first met a few years ago on a family trip to Las Vegas (he was excited because he’d never been on a plane before), and who was looking forward to getting his life back together after making some mistakes when he was younger. But this poem mostly ended up being about my step-mom, who actually went back to work the day after it happened—partially because she couldn’t bear the silence and grief at home (this is also only a few months after my biological brother lost his battle against leukemia), and partly because this is America, and like it or not, there are always bills to pay.” (web)
Related* “For Ahmaud Arbery, an Unarmed Black Jogger Killed for Allegedly Looking in the Window of a House Under Construction” by Michael Meyerhofer * “Giant Tortoise Filmed Attacking and Eating a Baby Bird” by Michael Meyerhofer * “Watching Lions Spare a Turtle on the Same Day that Derek Chauvin Was Found Guilty of Murder” by Michael Meyerhofer
Andrea Hollander
FIELD HOSPITAL
Southern France, 1945
What young men won’t do, my father wondered,scalpel in hand, his army drabs stained red,catching his breath beneath his surgeon’s mask,peering again into the body of this boyhe guesses joined up like all the rest:to prove something. And my father’s taskof cutting—cutting through tissueand bone, using everything he’s learned.War is war, of course. He knows that.His job: to keep these boys alive,even the Germans, to cut pastgangrened flesh. Afterwardsthe intricate suturing, the mangledlimbs removed from the antiseptic tableby someone else. How he’s ableto do this, hour after hour, one bodybecoming another, he doesn’t know.He thinks of this now in Brooklynwalking down Court Street to the barberpast all the specialty shops—cheese wheelsfrom France, barrels of pickles,salmon and mussels on racks of ice,rabbit carcasses, their skins removed,hanging above displays of liver and chops.Against his will the smell and the soundof the saw he always had to use,the feel of it, and in his arm the ache.—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
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Andrea Hollander: “During the wars that have occurred in my lifetime, I have found myself dwelling on my father’s wartime experiences in France, where he served in the surgical unit of an American army field hospital. After the war, my mother, who had not seen him for more than two years, joined him, and that’s when (and where) I was conceived. I credit Dad, who was a lover of poetry, for my own passion for it.” (web)
Related* “Delta Flight 1152” by Andrea Hollander * “Eating Mashed Potatoes” by Andrea Hollander * “After the Memorial” by Megan Collins
B.A. Van Sise
BASEBALL
My mother hated it. Everythingabout it: the field, the players,the ads, the incessant America.The smell of hot dogs. The dustof peanuts. The way her son,a good Italian made of Italianingredients by her Italian body,would reduce himself to a bluehat, blue jacket, blue shirt, andgo with that man who did allthis to her to see it with a smile.She had an obligation, she wascertain, to stop this, and one daypulled me aside and said whatwere to her, surely,the most necessary wordsin the American language: youshould care about theNew York Mets as much asthey care about you. The New YorkMets did not care aboutme. Still, thirty years later,I like to see a game. Once ayear, I’ll sit in the warm sun,covered in peanut dust, andthink, gently, about thesoft uncut grass of her grave.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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B.A. Van Sise: “I spent most of the pandemic on the road, working as a photojournalist covering a crumbling nation. I wrote this on a little blue notebook while sitting on the lawn at a Memphis Redbirds game; you pay them five bucks, you get to lie out on the lawn while little kids run around in circles around you, and bigger kids run around the bases somewhere off in the distance. Put more simply: it’s Eden before the apples.” (web)
Related* “Time Travel” by Alida Rol * “Naming the Beasts” by Elizabeth Morton * “Notes for Living in NOLA” by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett
John W. Evans
MUSICIANS AT THE WEDDING
All week at the weddingthe musicians keep practicingover the garage, during the rehearsal,in the basement at night,on the back porch while it rains.Even the grass after the rainworries someone in the kitchen.The tables and caterers, the flowersand the muddy road to the barnare covered in lights. This is a good time,someone says, to take five, guys, or fifty. The musicians are soggy, too.They start again: five or six bars of the bridal march, the chorus, the last encore.On the porch a bartender is humming the first dance as he bins the ice and juices,orange and lemon. His cherries are staked on tiny plastic swordsthe wedding guests will make a great showof plucking hilt-first.They stand en garde,a warning term in fencing,the first sport played in the Olympics.In the original en garde position fencersheld their back hand in the airto lift lanterns during duels.Back and forth to the bar the guestslitter the grass with broken promises.This is what happens when you fallin love: you dance all night, you collapsefor one reason or anotherinto the wet grass.—from The Fight Journal
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John W. Evans: “I wrote the poems in The Fight Journal to make sense of an experience about which I felt strongly biased: my divorce. I wanted to recognize the humanity of all involved on the page because this was something I struggled to do in real life. I hoped to find closure, healing, and an answer to two questions. Why had my marriage failed? How had I been complicit in that failure? Adrienne Rich’s “From An Old House in America” was the formal model for the long title poem. Marta Tikkanen’s ‘The Love Story of the Century’ was a precedent for writing about these dynamics. Both poems are personal favorites.” (web)
Related* “Zeitgeber” by Anna M. Evans * “Heirloom” by Jackson Burgess * “What You’ve Done” by Alexandra Umlas
Kaitlin Reynolds
PATSY
After the blizzard, my husband drivesout to the cemetery to check on his mother. He calls it Just Driving Around to See What’s What and neither of us talk about the winding road he takes that eventually turns west, past the old peanut mill, to the quiet part of town made even quieter, knee-deep in that singular hush of snow.We pass the gates as casually as two peoplecome for a welfare check on the dead can be.We don’t even get out of the car, don’t even turn down the small beaten path that leads to her headstone, nestled under the old juniper.I look one way while he looks the other,because it would break the illusion of our almost-aimless drive; because he’s committed as I am to our parts (Curious Townsperson 1 & 2); because it’s a bone-deep kind of right to give him this moment alone, let him feel the ache and bewilderment of a heart still yo-yoed by love—so the other end of the string is a powdered stone. What does that matter? What has that ever mattered?She was always, always cold, he tells me. Middle of summer, August heatwave—didn’t matter. Her room was a sauna. He rolls his eyes, smiles, and the visit is over. We drive past the gates, take turns watching the juniper sink in the rearview mirror. He takes my hand and pretends to see a bird. I lace our fingers, pretend to see it too.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Kaitlin Reynolds: “I feel this need to commit as much as I can to written memory—because moments are the most precious things I’ll ever possess, and because the mind is a poor steward. I want better for them than a few decades of aimless floating around in my skull, waiting to erode into oblivion. Even if I’m the only one who ever knows: they happened, and I felt them, and they mattered. And everything deserves somewhere to go.”
Related* “Tonight at Last Call, J. Calls me His Brown Liquor Girl Again” by Alexis Rhone Fancher * “Visiting My Mother’s Wars” by E.A. Wilberton * “A Hundred and Fifity Kinds of Grasses” by Heidi Garnett
Image: “Dream House, Later” by Susan MacMurdy. “Cut Out” was written by Sandra Nelson for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Sandra Nelson
CUT OUT
The façadeof thingness floatsover the void.A blizzardof nothingnessblows sideways.Even the hearthuddled in a paperhouse shudders.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2023, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I can’t quite wrap my head around Sandra Nelson’s poem ‘Cut Out,’ and that’s what I love about it. Each stanza feels almost like a koan, surprising and meditative; they seem to invite the reader to understand with the soul rather than the mind. There is a lovely contradiction in Susan MacMurdy’s piece, in that the image feels highly textured and full of depth while also strikingly, beautifully simple. I sense a similar contrast in the images of ‘Cut Out’: ‘A blizzard of nothingness,’ ‘paper house shudders.’ Both poem and image fascinate me, and I appreciate the way they add new layers of intrigue to one another.”
Related* “Broken Places by Daylight” by Sandra Kasturi * “Devotion” by Brianna Locke * “After the Extinction” by Susan Carroll Jewell
Candace Moore
PROJECTION
What I took to be a mancradling a woman in his arms and kissing herturned out to be the gardener carryinga pile of leaves he had gatheredWhat I took to be a billboard that said Gold Cock Motelturned out to be a billboard that said Gold Crest MotelWhat I took to be a sentence that said, I have an officer in my garageturned out to be a sentence that said, I have an office in my garageWhat I took to be a screen at the ATM machine that said your transformation is being processedturned out to be a screen that saidyour transaction is being processedWhat I took to be a friend anxious to see meturned out to be an intruder kicking in the doorWhat I took to be a Buddha sitting under the tree turned out to be an old lady readingWhat I took to be an old lady readingturned out to be me—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Candace Moore: “Despite my father coaching me that ‘there is no money in poetry,’ I’ve been reading and writing poetry ever since I was a teenager and I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose entire book of collected poems I wrote out in long hand. If I was asked what three poets I would invite to a dinner party it would be Rumi, Leonard Cohen, and Emily Dickinson. I agree with Emily: ‘A word is dead when it is said, some say, I say it just begins to live that day.’”
Related* “Alphabet of Boa” by Candace Pearson * “Starfish” by Michael Strand * “Molly” by Janice N. Harrington
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
ONE YEAR LATER
It’s easy to look away from warwhen your wallet’s empty and sink is full,when the land and people aren’t yours,when your children scream for moreof you, when your body’s pulled, it’s easy to look away from war.The soil across the water to earth’s corebrims blood, but look, the sunflowers still bloomwhen the land and people aren’t yours. So, you focus on the daily chores,dig out a trench of laundry—linens, wools—it’s easy to look away from warwith the dog barking, mailman at the door.Your children speak a stranger’s tongue at school,the land and people aren’t yours.How does a house become a shoreno news can reach? Are we that cruel? Or is it just that easy to look away from warwhen the land and people aren’t yours?—from Poets Respond
February 26, 2023
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Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: “It’s the week of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Today, Feb 21st, is exactly a year since Putin’s heinous speech foreshadowed the invasion with his perversion of history, staking claim to a sovereign nation and people. It’s a year since I coped with the inevitability of this war by transforming his speech into an erasure published here too. The war in my birthplace has continued to be a daily reality of my life, just as it has for most of those in the Ukrainian diaspora. But for many other Americans, this war has moved into the periphery or completely out of view. According to recent polls, a little less than half of Americans support continued military aid, with a third outright against it, and the rest apathetic to US involvement. Inspired by Jehanne Dubrow’s masterful villanelle ‘Civilian,’ from her forthcoming book Civilians, I was moved to write one too. The refrains bouncing and echoing in my head until I got them down on paper. This poem is a plea for continued US—as well as global—support and vigilance. For a refusal to look away from war. For action. And if you are able, please consider contributing to an aid organization that helps those who are in Ukraine and refugees trying to flee. I recommend Ukraine TrustChain. An all volunteer-run nonprofit started by Ukrainian immigrants in the US, they work with local volunteers on the ground, going directly into areas hard to reach by larger international organizations. TrustChain provides urgent food, medical supplies, and transportation to safer regions.” (web)
Related* “The Ukrainian Flag Stares through the Balsam Fir from Larry’s Trees” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach * “Mir in Ukraine” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach * “To Combat Antisemitism, Write a Villanelle” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Colette Inez
ADVICE TO A WRITER IMAGINING CONCEPTION AND BIRTH
Look for a tree stump in the woods. Compare it to love,examine the particulars, how your mother mountedyour father on Labor Day in a bungalow, Liberty, New York.Describe a snowfall before your parents met. Take your time.Leave out myth and literature. Relate it to life in an Americantown, one with a rotating cocktail lounge.Now imagine yourself as a parchment wormwedged into a crevice to avoid attack. Liken your fearto a clamp. How does it resemble the opal clamfrom New South Wales? Speak up. Check it out.Write a poem of departure in which you use the color blue,a hue like the glow of fish cast ashore by a stormy sea.Your parents are leaving town. They’ve rented a bungalowin Liberty, New York. You’re not around to say: after dark,exact change. You’re not even a tiny moonlet in a microscope,a bluet in the woods. Contrast your nothingness to wordsthat start with “k”: killjoy, kisscurl, kelp. Are these wordscomical in any special way? Say how you feel about kale.Will you grow to leave it on your plate?Your parents sit in a trance. They have just made loveand are counting snowflakes: uno, dos, tres …Are they from Bogota, Colombia, and in New York ona whim? You are about to divide. Say something about theintricate coil of DNA. Double helix. Double Dutch. Jump in.Make the leap. Now you’re a nation newly emerged.Dispense with history, the transitory passions of people’s wants.Words are dropping fast.—from Rattle #25, Summer 2005
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Colette Inez: “A poem is born right here, somewhere in my heart, in my blood vessels, in my gut. It comes to the brain much later. I have to feel them actually pulsing in my body, and then when they get shaped, when the brain, the controller, the pilot, whoever one’s metaphor, however this metaphor can extend, takes over. I like to think that my brain is the lesser part of my poems and that my heart, in the best of my poems, is the one that rules.” (web)
Related* “The Tuner” by Colette Inez * “The Play of Lovers” by Colette Inez * “The Letter Before A” by Colette Inez
Shannan Mann
YOUR HANDS
Like coals they ashed me bit by bit, your hands.The open fire thrilled me, I admit—your hands.A panther only sees white food at night. It is natural,then, that against my cheekbone you hit your hands.I crumbled into the sour milk of your tears as you begged:So deep is my pain, save me. With this ring, commit your hands.You called me priestess, whore, my half, my sin, my soul.I sang bastard, bewitcher infidel, hypocrite, your hands.Great men become bone, their names given to stars, but stars tooburned when they learned how piety and lust lit your hands.I unearthed my cremains from the ghats of the Ganges;a beggar tithed me a coin, along with it, your hands.I discovered a woman created in my own image. I lifted her veil.Behind it: dead birds, zephyrs, a faded palette, your hands.You said, love achieves glory when lovers take up arms.Yet no matter what I killed I could never outwit your hands.Who has not made love to beasts in wild wastelands?Shannan, it is not gold, it is gore, it is shit: your hands.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Shannan Mann: “I wrote for several hours a day until I was 17. Then, I ran away from an abusive home and wound up in an almost-worse place. I didn’t write for 8 ½ years. After a near-death birth experience (for both my daughter and me), I was inspired to begin writing again. The first poem I wrote was for a Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge. Through that, I connected with previous challenge winner, Karan Kapoor, who encouraged me to read Agha Shahid Ali’s collection of English ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. He also challenged I write a better ghazal than the master. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come close to Shahid, but this poem is now part of a growing collection of ghazals that deal with my experience as a woman, person of colour, and a mother. All poetry is community, but the ghazal especially so. And I don’t think I’d be exaggerating one bit if I said that Rattle helped me to be a part of this community once again, long after I thought I’d exiled myself beyond return. My sincere gratitude for this magazine and every single poet who graces these pages.” (web)
Related* “I Ask AI to Write a Poem for My Lover” by Shannan Mann * “Your Body” by Shannan Mann * “Griefsong Heard at Sea” by Shannan Mann
Image: “Dream House, Later” by Susan MacMurdy. “Devotion” was written by Brianna Locke for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Brianna Locke
DEVOTION
Think about: the sun, climbing through windowsinto pearl-grey morning, gently waking the body.How light expands outwardfrom the horizon, uncontained. And the breeze, playing with leaves, like fingersthrough a beloved’s hair. And the days. Remnants of the hardest rolling over to finally rest. And the bright stillness of everything,your lungs fresh and wide with every new breath.Each beat of your heart, inside of your ribs, a small knocking,the pulsereminding the housewhat keeps it warm.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2023, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Susan MacMurdy: “After reading and rereading the wonderful poems written in response to my collage, what finally helped me decide was imagining the poem and my collage hanging side by side on a wall where they could talk to one another. ‘Devotion’ seemed to expand and deepen the conversation started by my artwork. ‘Dream House, Later’ was one of several collages I completed during that first pandemic summer. I set up a summer studio at a friend’s house north of New York City. The simple building depicted in my collage was both my work and living space. And everything I needed. The lines: ‘And the days. Remnants of / the hardest rolling over / to finally rest’ recalled my use of cut-up calendars as a reminder of counting, losing track of, and somehow surviving those difficult days. Dreams were put on hold or deferred. Priorities shifted. The final lines sum up the hopeful image of heartbeats at the open door.”
Related* “Fault Lines” by Margaret Malochleb * “Identity Politics” by Drea * “Grief” by Susan Carroll Jewell
Richard Jordan
DIARY POEMS
What led her to write poetry she didn’tshow to others? She entrusted versesto diaries with gold-edged pages, hiddenin a cedar chest. Preserved in cursiveare rondeaux and cinquains. She relished snow,seashells, roses. There’s a bookmarked sonnetabout a grandchild she would never know,a future that took shape the way she wanted.My grandma had no training, didn’t gobeyond eighth grade. Amid the Great Depressionshe worked the mills, saved feed sacks to make clothes.But here’s a line she wrote absent the lessons:Dusk rolls a coral carpet down the stream.I’ve seen that for myself. For real. In dreams.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Richard Jordan: “Mathematician Lipman Bers (1914–1993) said, ‘mathematics is very much like poetry … what makes a good poem—a great poem—is that there is a large amount of thought expressed in very few words.’ I’m a mathematician myself, and while I can’t really explain what drives my need/desire to express myself via the written word, I guess it isn’t all that surprising that I turn to poetry to do so.”
Related* “Questions of the Heart” by David Jordan * “Satori” by Mark Smith-Soto * “Dear Phil,” by Jeff Whitney
Clare Cross
PIGEON DYED PINK
I too colored birds, or tried to. Minedidn’t hatch. Every day, I peeredinto the yellow incubators, hopingto see a cracked shell, a blood spot,a beak, something to tell me I’d havebright chicks, like I saw at the state fairand could bring to the science fair.After we gave up, my father buriedthe eggs out back, broke themfirst to see. I was too sad to watch,but my sister remembers a dead chick,brilliant blue like the food coloringI’d injected, my ten-year-old fingerspushing the hypodermic’s plungerafter carefully poking small holes.I wrote out a schedule for turningthe eggs. Everyone played mother hen.My brother, who stayed up late,turned them at night, my motherat dawn. How I longed for those chicks,red, blue, green. How I pictured them,pretty and purple and soft. And thenit was over, nothing but broken shells,dead embryos. I still made a posterfor the science fair, set out emptyincubators, talked to judges, somehowwon a first prize. My brother builta computer and won first outstanding.But in this year, this 1969, when everyoneknew Christiaan Barnard’s name, the boywho sliced open two rats, moved a heartfrom one chest to another, called thisa transplant, counted ten heartbeatsand said the rat lived, that boygot his picture in the newspaper,his two dead rats right thereon the front page.—from Poets Respond
February 21, 2023
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Clare Cross: “When I saw the story about the pigeon that died (and was dyed), probably after being used for a gender-reveal party, I was appalled like everyone else. But then I remembered that, as a child, I had seen dyed baby chicks at the State Fair and for some reason, my parents agreed to let me try dying some for a science fair project. So then I started thinking about my child self, my parents, and the general disregard for animals at that science fair, which led to this poem.”
Related* “Breaking News: Oscar Bait” by Karthik Purushothaman * “Straight Shooter” by Bayleigh Cardinal * “Paper Birds Don’t Fly” by Al Ortolani
Elizabeth Hill
SLUT
In the parking lot of Churchill’s Garden Center, my motherturned to me and said, I found the pills. I asked What pills?though I knew. The birth control pills. Are you having sex? Yes, I said, with pride. She whipped the words out,fast as a striking snake, You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re too young. Are you in a relationship? Though I was, I said, No. Her face cinched tight and she turned in profile, considering her options.And I could see her jaw shifting, slowly. She turned to face me and blurted, Who the hell are you having sex with? Different people, I said, though there was only one.She flushed red and sound issued from deep in her throat. You … stop … now. Don’t you have any self-respect?! Do you want to be a slut?!Do you want people to call you a slut?!I’m going to tell the pharmacist to stop giving you the pill.Then I’ll get pregnant, Mom, and people will certainly talk about that, I said with internal glee. Why are you doing this? she demanded, with fury closely held behind her teeth. After a long silence, I said, to play the field, Mom. To see what’s out there. Her face stiffened, tighter. Her lids clamped closed as she turned the ignition. Gripping the wheel tightly, she drove the AMC Pacer the twenty miles to our home, as I began to describe the boys who came to my mindand the fantastical circumstances of our sex. I gave Red a blow job in the woods near School Street. I had sex with Daniel in our biology classroom after school … I struck out for myself, for a realm independent of my mother’s strictures, her angry enforcement.And Miles, I said, (my actual boyfriend, who I adored), We’ve had sex a few times. And it was so good, I thought, our bodies straining, reaching for more, and more. I did not share this particular delight with my mother,as it came close to an admission that there was only one boy. Her face was heavy with sadness and rage. Giddy, I leaned out the window of the obsolete Pacer and yelled out the names of my purported partners. I sang them out,past the white Colonials on Walnut Street, prudish with their tiny windows and doors, past the dilapidated candy store on High Street whose charms I had outgrown, past the seamy, doldrum Seabrook dog track where I was not old enough to place bets,and oh, so far past the home of Ann Fieldsend, the actual town tramp, who was currently pregnant.Finally I sat, satisfied.I remember my mother’s livid, punitive face, her roiling silence, her crippling grip on the wheel.And it dawned on me, I’ve won,and I resolved never to tell her the truth.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Elizabeth Hill: “I am a retired administrative law judge who decided suits between learning disabled children and their school systems. I live in Harlem, New York, with my husband and two irascible cats. I write poetry because I love words, and because I hope to connect with others’ emotions.”
Related* “My Son No Longer Missing” by Susan Vespoli * “There Used to Be Rules” by Elizabeth S. Wolf * “Slut” by Ukamaka Olisakwe
Shannan Mann
I ASK AI TO WRITE A POEM FOR MY LOVER
and it writes me a red flag. According to science,love enters midlife crisis at 17 months. We areat 11. Six more months, I tell him, untilthe AI poem assembled from our woe-and-woo world prophesizes our war.But we’re having fun with this,we’re piecing together a breadloaffrom crumbs like fire and flower.Change flower, K says. We scrollthrough a list of color and smell,settle on lilies, cut and pastethem beside the lonely cursor.He claims a poem is not justthe poem but the place it camefrom too. I claim annoyancewith ether, with technologyselling water by the river.And just as we want to scrapetogether a sonnet, a powercut obliterates the WiFi,our screen goes black, the sonnetof ones and zeroes yawns behindthe glass. We bite our lungs shutin the prosthetic night, kiss like snowon windshields. Our fingers flickeragainst skin, trace a minefieldof muscle along spine. Clothescrumble. Words linger like spidersbeneath the toilet bowl,their bowstring legs attemptingto weave a world despiteall the shit. AI wouldn’t writeshit into a love poem, he says.Wouldn’t feel the urge I doto write you poems, fix youdinner, speak to you differentlyin bed than I do at the table.Your words aren’t more yoursthan in a poem. You do not ownlanguage, but these birdson a wire are yours alone.—from Poets Respond
February 19, 2023
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Shannan Mann: “AI is going to be next year’s Poet Laureate.” (web)
Related* “Griefsong Heard at Sea” by Shannan Mann * “Your Body” by Shannan Mann * “Roadkill, San Pedro” by Alexis Rhone Fancher
Marvin Bell
BASHO’S FROG
The plop of Basho’s famous frogwhen it leapt into the pond,thus seeming to pierce the ancient water,which circled and instantly resealed itself,offers us the chanceto crack the silence that overtookthe empires and their far flung armiesby hearing again that whichthe armies could not kill. So, too,those who traveled to New Zealand to seethe full eclipse firsthand were ableafterward to feel again the shiverthat overtook the land when the night arrivedahead of time. And to rememberthe cries of the roosters when it was over.Basho’s frog at the plop!—it’s the provable moment to be registeredamong the plopping and croaking and windshaking the cherry blossomsout of the trees while we were still on the roadgoing to see them.—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
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Marvin Bell: “It’s true that, no matter what, the literary world is full of insult. When you put yourself out to the public, you’re going to get some negative stuff. But writing just feels wonderful. I mean, I love the discovery aspect of writing. I love that. I love saying what I didn’t know I knew, not knowing where I’m headed, abandoning myself to the materials to figure out where I’m going. Of course your personality is going to come out of it, of course your obsessions are going to make themselves known, of course if you have a philosophic mind a matrix of philosophy will be behind things; everyone has a stance, an attitude, a vision, a viewpoint. All that will come out. But in the meantime, you’re just dog-paddling like mad. And that’s fun. That’s what I always liked about every art.”
Related* “Basho’s Hut: A Haibun” by Kenny Tanemura * “Ode to Short Shorts” by Kenny Tanemura * “Deadline” by Marvin Bell
Jennifer Griffith
AUGURY
I’d been bleeding for a year when we unsexed the frog. Cold and pungent from formaldehyde, it lay with limbs splayed and pinned to the tray. The science teacher lectured about the arrangement of a frog’s organs, how similar they are to ours, that dissection helps us learnthe way our bodies work too. We’d been studying frogs for days; my lab partner and I were sick of them, so, we relieved ours of its reproductive parts, flicked them out the window, chipped pink nails launching tiny gray entrails to the snowy pavement outsidethe decaying junior high that looked like a penitentiary.Inside, biology was wild; boys dumped bottles of fox lurein the radiators, stole a Fiesta Barbie from the Spanishlab, denuded her and hung her from the cafeteria blinds. Someone in homeroom had a crush on me, but he smelled like cigarettes and dirty socks, was in the slow courses,and went around with sticky streaks of pot resin down the legs of his jeans. It’s called “amplexus” when a male amphibian wraps himself around the female and releases his sperm on the tapioca pearls of her eggs. In French class,our teacher smeared crimson lipstick on her mouth like a wound. She came to school sick most days and taught us the language of the body: maux de gorge, maux d’estomac, la jambe blessée, Or, like a certain frog, malade dans les trompes de Fallope,malade dans les ovaires. In the third-floor bathroom, I watched a tall, blonde eighth grader pound an anxious, primitive rhythm on the broken Kotex machine. A scarlet Rorschach bloomed across the ass of her white pants, the red blot shaped like West Virginia, or maybe a human heart, la coeur.When tadpoles turn into frogs, their external gills move inward and evolve into lungs. In water, frogs breathe through their skins, but they cannot feel love. My own body had become a violin; some days I thought if I drew a bow across myself, I could cry a concerto. During study hall, the boy behind me arranged my long hair in a pile on his desk, lay his head down in it and slept. I listened to the soft sounds of his breath while I did algebra problems—oxygen, nitrogen, variables, and equations mingling in the air. —from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Jennifer Griffith: “I began writing poetry when I was a child and have always been fascinated by why we remember some things in our lives and totally forget others. ‘Augury’ came from my exploring various moments I recall from middle school, and, through writing the poem, I discovered that those seemingly random memories, whose commonalities appeared to be only time and proximity to one another, were actually topically and symbolically analogous and revealed a body rather than just an assortment of parts. So I guess you could say I write poetry to galvanize fragments into flesh.” (web)
Related* “We Defy Augury” by Austin Smith * “Dog at the Farm” by Timothy DeJong * “Postcards From Bohol” by Angela Narciso Torres
Patricia Crawford
SWEET PEAS
All along the back fenceTucked between the incineratorAnd the clothesline, hidden from viewMeandered the prodigal sweet peas.Lassoed with chicken wireClimbing up and over the fence.Reaching through the smog filterTo the sunshine.The whole fence was a wash of colorA secret wall of delight.I wandered down the row,Woozy with their perfumeWishing I didn’t have to exhaleBetween inhales—just takeAll the swoony sweetness insideAnd keep it there.—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997
Related* “Sometimes the Dream Comes Back to Me” by Lewis Crawford * 2011 Pushcart Prize Nominees * “Granddaddy (for Nana)” by Lewis Crawford
Sarah Ederer
BASIC NEEDS
Listen,I could tell you about the hot cat shitThat lay in the hallwayJust outside of my mother’s bedroomNestled into itself on the floorLike a sleeping dog.I could tell you that,Like a sleeping dog,We stepped over it carefully.Like a sleeping dog,We walked past it every day andMost of the timeWe ignored it.I could say that we treated it like a part of the backdropA landmark of homeHanging in the air under our nosesLike a soft-baked pretzelComforting and familiarAnd you might think that I’ve said enoughFor you to understand just how outrageous the situation wasBut I haven’t.The truth is,The cat shit never bothered me that much.Not at first.There was a brief moment of disgust,Sure,But that moment would endAs quickly as I could take one stepAnd get over it.Then I was in another room and,As far as I was concerned,The cat shit was gone.What bothered meAbout the pile of cat shit in the hallwayWas what I suspect would bother anyone:How shameful it wasTo be living that way.But that shame wasn’t something I could accessIn the folie-a-quatreThat was my childhood home.I became aware of the shame much later in life,Found it wafting over me one night,When my own family’s dogHad an accidentAt the foot of my bedAnd I got up to clean itwithout thinking.It was an automatic response:There’s shit on the floorIt must be removedRemove it.It struck me like a freighterThat I had been robbed for sixteen yearsOf something I felt that I was entitled to,But never received.I couldn’t quite put that thing into words,But it amounted roughly to“The right to not have to step over piles of cat shitEvery goddamned day of my life.”Then the shame arrivedIn its fullest form:A revelationAbout the burden of secrecy.I had spent sixteen years of my lifepretending that the pile of cat shit wasn’t thereWaiting for meWhen I got home from school.I got so good at pretendingThat sometimes I wasn’t even awareThat there was a pile of cat shitWaiting for me,For my mother,Outside of her bedroom door.But the cat shit was always there,Lingering,An ornament of a broken home.The cat shit was thereWhen I kissed my first boyfriend.The cat shit was thereWhen he fingered me in the car outsideAnd I lied and said my parents were homeSo he couldn’t come in.I stepped over the cat shitAnd fell into my bedAnd dreamed of him kissing me,Touching me,Touched myself to the thought of itAll while the cat shit,Sun-dried and brittle,Shifted with the floorboards,With the weight of the house,With its damned foundation,Settling lopsided into the holeWhere the previous owner’s septic tank wasUntil it eventually collapsed.I spent sixteen yearsFalling into someone else’s shit.They kept twelve cats I never wantedAnd they asked me“How could you not want them?”As if I was cruelThey called me Bob BarkerI repeated it so many times:Spay the damn things.You can be buried aliveBy a certain kind of loveOne that I’m not so convincedIs kind at all.But the cat shit wasn’t what bothered me.Not really.What bothered meIs what I lost under the hordes of cheap, dysfunctional garbageThat my mother compulsively liftedFrom flea markets,Dollar stores,Yard sales,And clothing exchanges.A book of nursery rhymes,A keyless trumpet,A mummified tangerine,And a dressmaking dummy,Buried under soiled laundry,Buried under moldy dishes,Buried under childhood photosIn frames with broken glass.Buried somewhere underThe junk that nobody wantedWas my family.It became difficult to distinguish between the two.I wondered to myself,Standing next to a puddle of cleanserAt the foot of my adult bed,Why I had never cleaned the cat shitIn my childhood home,Why I stepped over it every time.A form of protest, maybeA sinking sense that it would never endThat twelve cats could shit faster than I could clean it,That flea markets,Dollar stores,Yard sales,And clothing exchangesNever ran out of junk,That I was a childWho had a right to somethingThat I never received.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Sarah Ederer: “To me, writing poetry feels a bit like lancing a boil and sending a ‘thank you’ card to the pus. I tend to use free verse narrative fiction to tell the untellable stories of people marginalized by the taboo nuances of a life lived under oppressive domestic conditions. I hope to help make experiences that might make one feel unintelligible to the world a little more easily understood by emphasizing the humanity and dignity of the protagonist.”
Related* “Housekeeping” by Rachel Lynn Nevins * “Pets” by Tom C. Hunley * “Wild Me” by Sarah Freligh
Thomas Mixon
EVERY FRIDAY
Every Friday growing up I’d get a chanceto get shot down. I’d ask someone to danceand mostly they’d say no. I’d say OKand plan next Friday’s move. On the frayof the middle school cafeteria, I’d tiltmy head in time with music. I’d jiltanyone who tried to comfort meuntil the lights came on. I’d fleeinto my mother’s minivan, wishingit a smaller car. She’d be fishingfor some idea of how things went.I’d say something false like I meantit, something I assumed she wantedto hear. I was dull and dauntedby the week ahead. I’d look outthe window, remember how devoutI was, three years before. I’d swornback then I saw the glowing hornsand nose of Rudolph in the sky.Maybe it had started as a lie,I’d said, but I’d known what I saw.Till puberty I believed in Santa.Every Friday after aches and hairconsumed my body, I would spareno mental expense, imaginingthe one I’d choose, fashioningthem into everything no singleperson could be. I didn’t minglewith the children chickeningout. I only felt the sickeningdread until the first slow song,upon which I would make the longjourney to the one that could foreverchange Fridays’ bad luck, and severeverything that was, from what could be.The times that someone would agreewere rare, but worth it. AfterwardI’d fly, not run, a newborn birdexpecting trees, but only finding sky.I’d open the van’s door and wouldn’t lieto my mother. I’d ask if she recalledthe Christmas light I’d been enthralledby, back when I was young.She’d say you’re still young,and I’d say no, and she would sigh,and while she drove guess where I looked.—from Poets Respond
February 14, 2023
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Thomas Mixon: “I wrote this on the second Friday in a row of unexpected objects being tracked, then shot down from the clouds. I thought back to middle school dances, those Fridays, that excitement, dejection. I thought back to thinking I saw something magical in the sky, when I was young, only to then grow up, and know better.” (web)
Related* “Daraprim” by Kayla Rae Candrilli * “What Do You Give” by Amy Elizabeth Robinson * “All My Stresses Live in Texas” by Clemonce Heard
George Bilgere
PALIMPSEST
We’re bicycling through the Tiergartenon a summer morning in Berlin,my wife and I, our son in his bike seat,and it really is a lovely day, exceptsomeone has spray painted in red,dripping cursive on the marble pedestalsof the statues of the great poetsand composers scattered around the park, Juden Raus, Jews Out, and my first thought is, hey, my German is getting better, I figured that out right away, even though the handwriting is poor,but of course the author was workingin the dark, and under a certain pressure, so really, you can’t blame him, and besides,the quality of the handwriting isn’tthe point here, nor is my progressin German, which in most respectshas been disappointing. The pointis that we have a bottle of wineand some ham and cheese sandwichesand we’re going to make the best of it,we’re going to spread the blanketand have a picnic here in the not entirelynew Germany, that bad last centurystill bleeding into this one, bloodstill soaking the feet of the poets,while our little boy, new to history,runs laughing under a blazing sun through the green illiterate meadows.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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George Bilgere: “One day last summer my five-year-old son walked in from the backyard and dropped a pill bug on the dining room table where I was eating my scrambled eggs. ‘Pill bugs are the dinosaurs of the backyard,’ he told me gravely. And I thanked him, because now I had an idea for a new poem. As anyone who has kids knows, they are born poets. The trick is to help them hold onto it as the distractions of adulthood loom.” (web)
Related* “Call of the Fox” by George Bilgere * “Chernobyl” by George Bilgere * “No Problem” by George Bilgere
Michael Mark
WHEN 5,000 PEOPLE DIE IN AN INSTANT
How much money do you send? How long do you shake your head for? Or wait, after you see the report uptick to 5,300, before you wonder about lunch? Give some post a like? Touch your face, reminding yourself you are still here, that this is what it feels like to be alive, the same alive those 5,700 people feltminutes ago. You look up to count the bumps on the popcorn ceiling—try to make it to 5,900 knowing the number will be higher by the time you’re half done, is already higher, 6,200, 6,800and it is too much to count. You close your eyes, imagine it’s you—there—your family, friends. You see each one of them, so close—the pores in their faces, flecks in their eyes, and only move on to the next when you can feel their breath as they breathe their name. How long between misery and luck and guilt and gratitude and terror and acceptance and hope— how long between refreshes for updates—guessing at the next number and putting the 7,300, the 7,600, the 7,900 behind you, deciding to send more money knowing that it will not be enough or writing something knowing even if you’re a Nobel Laureate it won’t be enough. So, you get on a plane. You don’t have a ticket, you rush to the airport, wait on standby, take the last middle seat. It doesn’t matter how many— it could even be one person you pull from the rubble. They don’t have to be a child. They could be anyone, any age, any shape, any color. They don’t even have to be alive—they could be one of the 8,000, 9,000, 10,000, 11,000. Now it’s 12,000. Now it’s 20,000.You dig with your bare hands and reach down and pull them out. It’s all you can do but you won’t, you don’t, you can’t, you don’t. Now it’s 28,192.—from Poets Respond
February 12, 2023
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Michael Mark: “The first report was 4,300 dead. We knew it was going to be higher. How can the human being deal with this beyond imaginable horror. We must imagine. We must do all we can do in the face of not enough.” (web)
Related* “A Daily Practice” by Michael Mark * “(T)(o)(o) (C) (l) (o) (s) (e)” by Michael Mark * “Jews in the Wrong Place in San Diego” by Michael Mark
Christina Kallery
ADULT NIGHT AT SKATE WORLD
You’d think it was an eighth grade dance,the way we stand shyly eying each otherwhen the first slow notes sound for couples’ skate.A fifty-ish man in a striped headbandand custom skates fit with blinking lightsasks would I mind? So we roll from the worncarpet onto the glossy floor. One hand on my waist,he gazes at a far wall and sings in high, quiveringtones to Endless Love. We pass a dozenother couples: office managers in sport shirts,single mothers squeezed into new jeansand a few lone ones gliding through the tide of clasped hands.Take the handsome Indian man with dark hair sweptlike a raven’s wings from its stern middle part,the moustache trimmed to a neat em-dash.He moves like a figure skater, one long leg aloftbehind his jump-suited frame. No woman here tonightcan match his prowess as he weaves easy figure eights,turns and sails backwards without a glance;though I imagine his likely office job, manningsome cubicle in a gray and taupe-y seaand the gaping dark that crouches nightly at his door.Now the rink’s Robert Plant commands the floorbeneath a silver disco orb and twirls once, twice,a third time, pretending not to watch uswatching him. In his prime in ’85, that bleachedmass of frizzed-out curls would have bobbed radiantunder hot stage lights during the guitar solo,his attention rapt to the art at hand, yet awareas a preening animal of the lip-glossed girlsin the front row whose eyes simmeredwith envy and desire. But the gigshave fizzled into soundlessness,the Dodge van scrapped, the red guitar lieslong untuned in its velvet chamberand each Sunday at eight he pulls the black skatesfrom their nook and somehow finds a rhythmnot unlike rock and roll in this dim-lit domewith its carnival colors and claw machine and womenfluffing their hair in restroom mirrors.Just overhead hover the sour divorces,languished careers, botched plans, those hours when lifetook a sharp turn toward the inscrutableand left us older and daunted in its wake.But when the DJ calls the night’s last song, we—the lonesome and afraid, the jadedand lost—peer through strobe lightsfor somebody, if not lovable, then not a lunaticand sing to a tune we first heard the summersomeone else left and we wept against a cool steering wheeland felt the world spin, fierce and marvelous beneath our feet.—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005
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Christina Kallery: “I spent my childhood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where I learned the following: toads do not like dollhouses, snow pants are universally unflattering and Duran Duran will never, ever schedule a tour date in Marquette. Keats’ ‘Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil’ was the first poem that emotionally affected me. When I was sixteen, I came across it in an old, beat-up library book and literally wept when I got to the scene where Isabella’s lover’s ghost appears at her bed. I still haven’t entirely lost my Romantic sensibility—sometimes to my chagrin. I still love poems that resonate at an emotional level.” (web)
Related* “How to Care for Your American Mastodon” by Christina Olson * “Self-Portrait as Mastodon Remains” by Christina Olson * “Me and Joni” by Donna Reis
Francesca Bell
CONDUCTION
The man drives as closely to my car as he can without making contact. His truck window is down. He is taking my right of way,and I’m driving home, already crying,from the audiologist’s office. I’ve turned on the music and have just been thinkingthat somewhere in Denmark, an engineer lays her headon a pillow filled, perhaps,with eiderdown, her mind stuffedwith equations she masteredin order to write the codefor the music setting on my new hearing aids. They cost meas much as a used car and will not rejuvenatemy cilia, cannot rebuildthis foundation that graduallycrumbles, but they haveresurrected, for this moment, the voice of the trumpet and polished its bright tones.I cannot conceive of how the years she bent to her math books resultedin this flashing beauty,but I lean on itthe way a person leanson a crutch when her kneehas given out, the wayI lean on Telemann who wrotethis concerto almost 300 years ago,each note big enoughto compensate—across time—for loss, for the man passing slowly by,menace blaring from his eyes, as, triumphant, he raiseshis middle finger like a baton. —from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Francesca Bell: “I write poetry in order to record the world’s strange symphony of abundance and loss, so I can play it back and try to make sense of it.” (web)
Related* “Narrow Openings” by Francesca Bell * “Where We Are Most Tender” by Francesca Bell * “I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My Hand” by Francesca Bell
Judith Tate O’Brien
SECOND WIFE
I keep drawing the firstone from the cemeteryinto the houseand pose herperfect as a mannequinat the kitchen tablewhere, chin restingon a long-fingered hand,she surveysthe bran muffinsand finds them crumbly.I imagine her comingto their bedsmooth-bodied.I arrive bone tired,half a centuryetched in my flesh.She gave himbabies. I, a notebookfilled with poems.—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
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Judith Tate O’Brien: “When I was in 10th grade, the visiting Catholic School Superintendent, a stern priest, recited Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven, stepping the cadence across our classroom floor—and I was moved to tears. To think that language could soften so hard a man! I became a convert to poetry. That’s why I write.”
Related* “A Little Sermon” by Judith Tate O’Brien * “Home” by Judith Tate O’Brien * “Sawdust” by Judith Tate O’Brien
Jeanne Yu
AMONG THE BABY BOK CHOY
for my dad, Yu Tseh-An
My dad loves the grocery store.He wanders the aisles in absolute amazement at what can be done with foodand fully embraces the concept of Stop and Shop.My mom latches on to the concept of running errands which is me jogging in while she waits behind the wheel of her Mercury Bobcat ready to pull out in the getaway car.Ahhh, the produce department, my dad’s favorite, his concentration in the misted spray as he sorts outall the possibilities of Chinese greens for dinner this would be good with soup, yeah?Smelling the roots, pushing on their tender heels,the scratching sound of the garlic sleeves as he makes his pick, Napa cabbage, A-choy and a puzzled look at a fennel bulb with a long stalk that he says smells like anise.Eventually, he finds his way into meats and dry goods,reading labels, taking in the dextrose, xanthan gum, Yellow No. 5, Red 40referencing it against his 40 years in the food industry what’s this mean? contains a bioengineered food ingredient.When I acquired an allergy to yeast, he said, how can you be allergic to yeast? I’m not and your mom’s not.Rather than show him the privacy of my rashes in Aisle 16,I decided it was best to move on to dairy.My mom tells us that Barbara T. called her yesterdayto tell her about Asians being shot in the grocery store, my mom, finally with a winning point to rush my dad along, he retorts you can’t change fate or be afraid.We queue up at checkout,and my dad wanders off againbut we know where to find him.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Jeanne Yu: “I write to make sense of life in this world … and to make sure I am paying attention to the little things that matter as well as the big things, because I have come to know they are all connected. I’m an engineer, mom, and environmentalist, every day trying my best—some days are harder than others—to live from a place of my hope for the world.”
Related* “Phone Sox” by Matthew Feeney * “The Famous Outlaw” by David James * “Ringtone Pantoum” by Steve Abbott
James Arthur
SAD ROBOTS
clean steel: inflexible, butwhere they’re strongis where they’re weak. ginsu knives,not flesh, they cut themselves, and fall apart.what do they want?to be waterfalls or give new leafto bend, unclenchto grow a peach—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets
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James Arthur: “Some poems take me years to finish, because even after a dozen bouts of revision, I can tell that something about the poem isn’t right. Eventually, I persuade myself that the poem is done, and I send it out into the world, but maybe I never fully forgive my reluctant poems for having caused me so much grief, because the poems of my own that I like best are the ones that seemed to arrive effortlessly, sometimes in a single afternoon. ‘Sad Robots’ is one. It was fun to write, and it still brings me pleasure.” (web)
Related* “Delta” by Arthur Bull * “Thank God for Sheep” by Arthur Santos * “Things to Ponder About the Southern Baptist” by Arthur McMaster
Joshua Eric Williams
IN A RECENT DREAM, I MET STEPHEN KING
He said he loved one of my poems, so I asked him which one. He responded, “The one about dying.” I told him he’d have to be more specific. He smiled and quoted the following, which I’d never written:SCABBARDA knife sinks in my chesta little every day.My flesh givesto the bladeand whets iton the way.I don’t fearthe descentor hurrywhat I say—A knife sinks in my chestand sharpensall it may.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Joshua Eric Williams: “Dreams sometimes spark my poems. A snippet of a haiku or a line of poetry will enter my dreamworlds, but I’d never had one come to me mostly formed until I met Stephen King in the dream I describe in this piece. Apparently, he also loves a formal poem. If I ever have the privilege of meeting the master of horror, I hope this true story inspires him as much as it inspired me.” (web)
Related* Haiku by Joshua Eric Williams * “In a Moment” by J. A. Lagana * “Old Testament Family Tree” by Kid Kassidy
Alejandro Aguirre
SAMBA DA SUA TERRA
Light as swash, her solesleft no trace in the sand,sandals pelagic like caravels.She had tossed hersto the sea as if theyhad always belonged there,sailing on their cloth straps,and she here, barefoot,teaching samba. She spreadher sarong from luff to leechand, laying it by my feet,said that I was not dancingif it puckered at my heels.I wasn’t dancing; we tunedthe radio to a Portuguese station,the host speaking too quicklyfor me. Listening, my instructorconfessed that she missedbeing a fisherman’s daughterand how wrong she was to dreamof what lay beyond Laguna,saudade like dolphin clicksfelt against the shinwith no net to cast.—from Poets Respond
February 5, 2023
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Alejandro Aguirre: “A new study suggests that the dolphins that have been helping Brazilian fishermen catch mullet fish since potentially as early as the 1850s live longer than other dolphins. I’ve only ever made one catch: a catfish about the size of my forearm. How much is a ticket to Laguna?” (web)
Related* “The Other Me” by Alejandro Escudé * “Maradona in Buenos Aires” by Alejandro Escudé * “My Body Is Antifa” by Alejandro Escudé
Virgil Suárez
AXIOM OF THE OUTSIDER
Sometimes you surrender to your destiny,a scratched-torn cardboard suitcase, blackas your shadow, places where travel seemsuncertain, these dead-hour porches, parasolssnapped shut like the lips of your dead lover.What hardens in you keeps you hungry,though your tongue can no longer tastebitter coffee or recoil from a salted cracker.These are, in fact, the last days of your spentyouth. Look at the tattered map, if you must—those lines converging can only spell trouble.The road ahead turns as dark as your days.—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
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Virgil Suárez: “When I’m not writing, I’m restoring a ’55 Chevy with which I plan to visit my favorite poets across North America and make a film documentary.” (web)
Related* “Homage to Donald Justice” by William Virgil Davis * “The Family” by William Virgil Davis * “St. Peter’s Cemetery” by Georg Trakl
Martin Vest
NORMAL IN WYOMING
from a letter to Jay
My doctor says I’m doing fine. He tells me everythingis normal. Honestly, I no longer know how to rattle him,and it scares me. I miss the days when my physical problems were unusual for my age. As you know, I walked with a cane by the time I was forty-five. Everyone knew it wasn’t normal. Everyone knew it was the result of an injury. Now people just expect it. Women look at me as if I’m a starter home they can’t believe they once lived in. I miss my wife. My ex-wife. My second ex-wife. But when I remember touching herI imagine my now-hand on her then-body and I shudder. I mean, just wait until you see the thing. My hand. Good god and my nipples. Not that I’ll show you. But wow! And they droop and kind of reach out, somehow eager and worried at the same time. Like a tourist at Sea World puckering for a kiss from a dolphin. My breasts, in general. They’re breasts now. And I have throatum. A portmanteau I made of “throat” and “scrotum.” Because that’s exactly what it looks like. You know the thing. Like Ronald Reagan’s. All the irony is gone from my hat. The On Golden Pond hat I used to wear. I still wear it but now it’s just befitting. Sometimes I think I’ll buy another, a different style, but then I just think why bother. There’s no getting that back. The last time I saw my doctor I told him. He was politely trying to usher me out of his office. So I stopped in the doorway. I stood up, kind of sputtered up my cane like a spark up a damp fuse, and I lingered, and I decided to mention about the weird screaming and hissing in my legs where the liquor did the damage. I finally said, “My legs … I can’t quite reach them, somehow. They feel like radio stations in the middle of Wyoming.” He just kind of half-smiled and eased me into the hall.That’s perfectly normal, he said.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Martin Vest: “Sometimes just the mention of ‘poem’ brings unwanted baggage, unwelcome pressure. I don’t feel that crap when I’m writing a letter to a friend.”
Related* “The Day I Tried to Committ Seppuku …” by Martin Vest * “Asterisks” by Martin Vest * “The Clinic” by Martin Vest
Kenneth Tanemura
LUNAR NEW YEAR IN HANOI: A HAIBUN
My wife and I are visiting her hometown, Hanoi, to celebrate the Lunar New Year with her parents, sisters, and extended family. The first day of the new year feels anticlimactic after last night’s fireworks, cigars, Italian wine, sweet rice. A few minutes after waking I hear the incessant subtle slow ticking of the clock that depresses me with the feeling of seconds as a unit of time, how limiting that is, cutting out the past, constricting the present, turning the future into oblivion. I saw thousands of peach blossoms being sold by vendors yesterday. They set up their trees and blossoms at West Lake and beyond, and throngs of cars and motorbikes crammed those narrow streets to get a glimpse, to bring something festive home, to brighten a house and the people who live there. People tied the little trees to their motorbikes and sped away, hoping the blossoms would bring them growth, prosperity, love. I think of a haiku with a peach blossom in it:The peach blossoms know nothing of the language barrierbetween mother-and-son-in-lawLooking out the window I see that only the part of the building across the street that faces the street is painted. The sides of the building are shorn of façade, of all aspiration towards beauty.First day of the year— the neighbour’s blue househas become royal blueI go downstairs to ask my mother-in-law if she needs any help. She always says no, though this time her expression seems to say, “But why didn’t you come down earlier? Don’t lie in bed with your Kindle for heaven’s sake. Don’t you see your wife is tending to the baby on her own?” She doesn’t speak English, only Vietnamese. I accept the validity of her perceptions. Books, art, and music, yes, but what about helping people? I’ve always been better with things. Words on paper are things like the bronze bust of an ancestor with eyes that look past you or within. Not the eyes of a man. For my infant son, the notebook I write on is just another thing to grab, grip, lunge for, maybe eat. But books provide clarity, language for experiences we have no words for, and new experiences we could not have had in any other way. I go out to the garden to see what’s happening there.First day of the year— how the small grapefruitbends the branch to water First day of the year—pond too murkyto see the carpI whistle at the caged guard dog to calm him, he sniffs the airin a calming wayUsed to be I went out with other poets to write haiku, a poetic genre I first learned about from my Japanese mother. Tea garden San Jose. Belonged to haiku clubs. Knew moments, not the bigger picture. Most moments are so-what moments, significant only to the perceiver, but irrelevant to the reader. There are a few that stand out, come rarely, like finding the snowy owl in the park in midwinter. My youth was still as rose bushes, I think. On the outside. Chaos inside, mood swings, dark days. Didn’t know what to do with a life. Am I still immobile, fixed? My mother-in-law is constantly in flux, at the kitchen sink, jumping on the motorbike to peruse flowers at the market, all the way out to West Lake and back. Frenetic pace. She does advanced yoga, and she’s agile as a 30-year-old in her 60s. Everything she does benefits others. The only indulgence she gives herself is an early Sunday morning bowl of pho at a restaurant overlooking Turtle Lake. Before the others wake up and their stomachs grumble for breakfast. Before she cooks, boils, chops, slices, fries, washes, all while catching up with her daughters.Talking gossip. She’s so invested in life and what is life if not the lives of people? Makes me think I got it wrong. Too much literature on the mind. Her husband has wandered out to his writing room, detached from the house, to drink tea, smoke a cigarette, consider if he should write a New Year couplet. He contemplates here in the little snatches of time he can steal from the day’s busywork. He’s formally educated. She didn’t go to college, but she comes from a literary family, a long line of poets and writers in Hanoi. They aren’t opposites and they aren’t conjoined. They are cosmologically interconnected. I want to write a couplet too, but I’m not feeling it—lack of sleep, grey morning, the water run dry.The hens their necks straightlook in different directionsThe path around the garden is blocked by low-hanging branches that bear no fruit or flowers. Is that it? Waste of time. Too sullen this morning for anything to open.The flower budseven on the first day of the year remain budsBig floppy leaves of a tree I don’t know the name of brushes my head as I walk back to the house. Starfruit dangle enticingly in the cool morning air. My mother-in-law and I are looking for different things: she wants the pure vibrancy of colour to colour over everything. I want the apricot tree that blooms only three weeks at a time, only three times a year, the ones that grace the house for Lunar New Year and are cast off into the corner of the garden later, as if they no longer symbolize gentlemanly purity and elegance unspoiled by greed or cruelty after the first week of the new year is gone. Pure vibrancy of colour. Maybe that’s the right way. To colour over everything. Past that is dissatisfaction. Past that is not life anymore.The Phoenix flowers’red petals upright on the first day of a new yearLeaving the garden, I go to my father-in-law’s office. My wife encouraged me to visit him there to learn the meaning of the poem he has composed. He has written a one-line poem shorter than haiku, in calligraphy, using Chinese characters. The poem is written on parchment paper with a little string at the top to hang on a hook. The poem reads: “Spring knocks at the gate.” The double meaning is that both spring and family visitors knock at the gate since it’s customary for people to spend the first day of spring visiting relatives. Spring knocks at the gate of a new year and enters. I don’t think it’s right to say that spring is symbolic of family members; neither are the family members emblematic of spring. Spring is tangible and felt: flowers bloom, birds sing, the air grows balmy and a renewed hope, a fresh resolve to give it another go bolsters us in the company of family and friends. Spring is spring, and family visitors are family visitors, yet they are the same thing. The moment you try to turn them into symbols, you lose their meaning. My father-in-law tapes his poem to the front gate, a wide, tall block of metal strong enough to protect a fortress. Yet the public display of a poem calligraphed on fragile paper reflects the true spirit of the people who reside there. When the visitors come, will they see themselves as spring knocking at the gate, or the first day of spring as a version of themselves, waiting to be let in?The first day of spring— everyone in their best clothes,their best facesThe first day of spring— in-laws become father and sonwriting at the same tableThe first day of spring— everyone granted a fresh startlooks beautifulThe first day of spring— we hand our work stressto the departed year of the tigerWe write at the same table, his writing table. He shares his New Year thoughts on social media, and I write haiku on my iPhone. This is the table where he wrote essays about his daughter, my wife. This is the table where he wrote when he was a formidable figure I never met, whose form was fleshed out by my not-yet-wife’s anecdotes, her eyes brightening less from the pleasure of telling a tale than for her love and admiration for her father. The anecdotes were about her father the kung fu teacher, doctor of Chinese medicine, author of bestselling books, poet, calligrapher, son of an important anti-colonialist revolutionary, manager of factories, a guy’s guy, the list went on. “Do you think you can handle the pressure?” she said.“Yes,” I said, not knowing what I was able to handle.Thanks to the miracle of taxidermy and a former student who hunted wolves, he sits on a chair directly in front of a wolf, its head hovering over my father-in-law, which makes him look like a wolf-man, spurred on by the spirit of freedom and instincts. This is his chair alone. “You have to sit facing the wolf if you want to write here,” he said.I face the wolf: those fangs, those enraged eyes, the mouth gaping open as if to snap shut like a guillotine onto a poor elk’s throat, don’t necessarily inspire numinous moments. Still, I focus on the wolf as a symbol of intelligence, communication, and understanding. “We all share a life together,” my father-in-law says, gesturing with a broad sweep of his hand. He grounds my isolate, individualist bearing, and brings me back to the communal, the common ground we all have, and share even more with our families.Going back to the kitchen, I ask my mother-in-law if she needs me to help her with anything. She is the heart and soul of the family. She placed the daffodils that bloom once a year on the table, because they are pretty and symbolize new beginnings. She flung open the big acacia double doors this morning and filled the entrance to the house with violets so they may bring a moment of peace and beauty to the visitors. She feeds the visitors, gives them tea, cleans up the mess they leave and sees them off with a vibrant smile and wishes for good health and success.First day of the new year— the faces of peopleare the faces of peonies—from Poets Respond
January 29, 2023
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Kenneth Tanemura: “I’m in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the Tet holiday to celebrate with my in-laws. There has been a lot of news coverage about the Lunar New Year holiday celebrations around the world, but somehow I found a lack of coverage in the major American newspapers. Most Americans seem to have a shallow understanding of this very rich and complex experience, which is far more layered and significant than the way Americans celebrate Christmas, for example. I wanted to write something that would illuminate the meaning of this holiday in greater depth.”
Related* “Basho’s Hut: A Haibun” by Kenny Tanemura * “Skills” by Kenny Tanemura * “Ode to Short Shorts” by Kenny Tanemura
Mary Meriam
THE ROMANCE OF MIDDLE AGE
Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showersat night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swimin cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hoursand days and decades, head to foot, and slimis just a faded photograph. It’s strangehow people look away who once would look.I didn’t know I’d undergo this changeand be the unseen cover of a bookwhose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker.One reaches for the pleasures of the mindand heart to counteract the loss of quickerknowledge. One feels old urgencies unwind,although I still pluck chin hairs with a tweezer,in case I might attract another geezer.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
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Mary Meriam: “Since I am the voice of a violet crushed by soldiers’ boots, I write poems. Since I am the last living passenger out of a subway disaster, I write poems. Since I am a wet quark in a dry universe, I write poems. Since I am a lover’s dream of her love, I write poems.” (web)
Related* “Alone in Love” by Mary Meriam * “Ars Poetica” by Mary Meriam * “Homemaker” by Mary Meriam
Idman Omar
COMPLETE FACTS ABOUT A WOMAN I LOVE DEARLY
At nine years old, a woman I love made tea asmen married her off to an eighteen-year-old gent.At fourteen she moved in. Her husband’s two front teethwere now red from fluoride, a personal collection ofprecious gemstones, or a reminder of roses she was owedeach time he took a new wife. There were tenin total, each woman a password unlocked with hisname; a hungry thinker, preoccupied with numerous mixed berry pies.She was strong and built a family of ninetroubled children. Three slipped down the toilet even thoughshe clenched her mouth too. She had five siblings, samemother and father, and six more from dad and secondbest. She was fifty-three when her husband died,alone and living in snow. As if uncertain of theheat of affection anymore or likea ghost kissed her brain,she couldn’t remember any of the children for—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Idman Omar: “I wrote this poem thinking about all the Somali women from my grandmother’s generation whose lives were very different to mine. It’s about the sacrifices they make simply to survive, ending up perpetually nomads for their whole lives and following a life plan that they don’t map out for themselves at all. Ultimately, they live eternally for everyone but themselves.”
Related* “It’s a Sad Story” by Valentina Gnup * “Sugar Babe” by Cherise A. Pollard * “Women” by Barbara Crooker
Image: “Unsatisfied Externals” by J. Stormer. “Resolution of Memory” was written by Sara Dallmayr for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2022, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Sara Dallmayr
RESOLUTION OF MEMORY
Once upon a heart lived a heartwithin a muted roomof yellows and greens.Once upon a lovestopped matter, matterstops, heartbeat warmagainst the wall.Once upon a said I timed how often we spoke,then how often we didn’t.Grey is the presence of re-collection, of night,mise en abyme slide like feet down a sand dune.How you stood before the windowand waxed your decency,watered the last plant alive,waited for tea to steep.How neatly remembering fitsbefore it spills sidewaysinto the squares of time.Once upon a doorI waited for you to open, then close.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2022, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There is a great deal of ambiguity and mystery in J. Stormer’s etching; I felt it needed a poem that was not too narrative or structured, but more experimental and open to interpretation. Sara Dallmayr’s ‘Resolution of Memory’ fit the bill: I love the way it subverts convention without leaning too far into abstraction, the way it combines concepts like ‘waxed your decency’ with concrete images like ‘watered the last plant alive, waited for tea to steep.’ Like its inspiration, ‘Resolution of Memory’ is just enigmatic enough to be compelling.”
Related* “The Room as We See It” by Andrew Payton * “The Widower” by Nick Bertelson * “Fibers” by Ashley Caspermeyer
Ted Kooser
TRAILWAYS
What once was the Trailways depot is a sports-bar today,and no one remembers the last coach for Grand Island pulling out and away, or recalls its last passenger, ghostly in profile at one of the windows, turning to take one last look at the oil-stained cement platform and the green metal bench where he’d waited, shoes toed in under his duffle, then fromthat high window looking down upon just one more placewhere he’d been. Today’s door’s the same door as always, all glass, and just now it’s wedged open to a cool breeze, this in the slow hour just after lunch, with nothing or no one expected until later, the schedule of Arrivals and Departures gone from high on the wall, replaced by a flat-screen TV, the attendant’s desk gone, exchanged for a long, glass-ringed bar, and just now the smell of beer seeping out into the street from the shadows, where some other ghost on a barstoolis waiting for someone to roll in from somewhere, and talking to whoever will listen about going somewhere better someday, but not yet, not till the time’s really right, and for now just having another of whatever’s on tap, turning the stool a half-turn to squint into the glare from all possible worlds.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Ted Kooser: “Many years ago I published a poem about field mice moving their nests out of the way of a plow in early spring, and a woman who saw the poem wrote to me and said that she would never again pass a freshly-plowed field without thinking about those mice, and I said to myself, ‘Well, this is to be my job!’ and I have been working at it ever since.” (web)
Related* “Wood Chips” by Ted Kooser * “A Pretty Pass” by Ted Kooser * “Cancer” by Ted Kooser
David Wagoner
THE PLUMBER’S NIGHTMARE
It was supposed to be open,but it’s shut. The handle says Hot,but it’s cold. It was supposed to beopen all the time, but somethingis turning it off and onand off. It was guaranteedand certified to be solid,sealed, and leak-proof,but it’s leaking. It’s crackedand porous, and someone forgotto check the easily readpunched date on the servicecalendar wired to the neckof the only switch in full viewof the owner of the buildingwho is watching and lamentingwhat he thought was meant to bethe foundation of running waterhe could still almost believe in,including you and yours,so what can you do nowbut look for the main valveto shut down everythingconnected to the rain?—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012
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David Wagoner: “My father was his own home handyman during the Depression, and he wasn’t always successful at it, as our frequently flooded basement often proved. I tried to do the same during my early married years. I sympathize with plumbers, and this poem came out of those feelings.” (web)
Related* “In Memory of His Memory” by David Wagoner * “Before the Poetry Reading” by David Wagoner * “A Plumber’s Guide to Light” by Jesse Bertron
Jasmine Khaliq
BRENTWOOD, APRIL 3rd
what is this, pulling me back the other way
to strip malls, highways, and treetops?
—Caroline Polachek, “Parachute”
for my twenty-fifth birthday I’d like to skydiveoff vasco road they take people upmy dad did this once before I wasever born; the hill opened uphis right knee. my mom watched, pregnant with me,still unnamed, unsexed, surely the size of recognizable fruit, surely recognizable fruit, every possibility. I’ll never do that again, he says, but I haven’t gone, I want to goskydiving; I think I would jump; I want to know california that way,unnaturally; I want to rattle like shucked corn inside myself;I want to see what my dad must have seen—after this,he bought a house in the country; he bought my sister and I a childhooddrawing on our wrists with sap from gerbera daisies,or that’s what I remember—I want to see all of it at once—the last two decades mount diablo a movie theater new lots new lawnstwo golf clubs on the other side of town—I went to high schoolthere my dad bought me a childhood here my sister and I,but he never took us cherry picking. every springI fell in love with people who could never understand me,and they’re reappearing in my dreams.I’m still in love; we’re at any one of our old houses.I used to drive to get you. dark blue chrysler with no a/cin the worst of our summers.those roads to your house I drive in my sleep.o’hara, fairview, minnesota, lone tree. I liked to watchyou drive me. I still would. your jaw.what was that alchemy? only proximity?to write sometimes I put on lipstick, jewelry, vivaldi.today: slow-motion videos of parachutes deploying:birds of paradise above us, color by color peeling. I want it—east bay rushing up toward me, unnaturally; those roadsI took; tense walks along deer creek. I wanted to disappearhere so many times. barely april and it’s hot enough to changehow the air smells—more animal,more alive. would you have imagined memaking it to twenty-five? smaller in the sky than any recognizable fruit,poppy blooming overhead, able finally to see these strip malls,highways, our childhoods, endless, green, every line—parallel, intersecting.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Jasmine Khaliq: “During the pandemic, I moved back to my hometown. By April 2021, I knew I was moving away again by July to enter my PhD program at University of Utah, and that I was moving for good, away from my family and the place of my childhood. I wrote every day in April in an effort to preserve my time there, both present and past. That overlapping sense of time I felt being there, and the inability to capture or see everything, despite my best efforts, came out in this poem on April 3rd (while I listened to Caroline Polachek on repeat). Poetry for me is always about this—trying to understand the relationships between the self and others, past selves, place, language itself—all of it, an alchemy.” (web)
Related* “Cataclysm” by Jasmine Ledesma * “Unbounded” by Russell Bittner * “Empty Souls” by Alexis Rotella
Chris Kaiser
TENDERNESS
The manager I’m shadowing tosses five steaming slices of fresh cut prime rib in the trash, as calmly as tech bosseslaying off 10,000 workers at a clip.I know he’s memorized the thick binder of exacting rules. He wants to rule the world. His flopped ears and underbite, though, reminders, he’s more shih tzu than snarling rottweiler. “Nine ounces,” he says, tossing the first slice. Each slice thereafter thrown on the ‘ounce’ cue.“Not ten. Not eight. But nine. To be precise.”His eyes lock with mine, smug with his coup.I imagine his sweet mother ignoring his skinned cats and other such cruel whoring.I then recalled helping some elderly.To say they reeked would be impolite.No cats, but cat food, a peculiarity.“It almost tastes like tuna, ain’t that right?” I recalled seeing handwritten entries in rural homes to casserole squirrel.Dogless men bird-dogging squirrels up trees,hoping buckshot only went subdermal.The manager walks away, droning on: “Nine ounces of medium-rare beef, au jus, baked potato, sauteed onion, steak knife, dessert fork, lucky cloverleaf …”I think, Best to parboil squirrel, large size,with a glug of vinegar to tenderize.—from Poets Respond
January 22, 2023
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Chris Kaiser: “When I heard a piece on NPR’s Think about food waste, I remembered an incident that happened to me when I thought I’d want to pursue restaurant management. It also jogged my memory of times I’ve come face to face with people devising creative ways to assuage their hunger when their income is below the poverty line.”
Related* “The Year of the Eclipse” by Elizabeth Knapp * “Prayer for Anything but Prayer” by Chris Emslie * “While My Husband Is in Foot Surgery During a Pandemic, I Watch Footage of the Lake Fire” by Jean Prokott
Heather Bell
LOVE LETTER TO THE GULF COAST OIL SPILL
The photos taken from helicopters are reallyquite beautiful: the weird orange waves, the wayit bends back like a spinal cord. It isn’t that Iam not sympathetic to the ocean, but ittouches the tips of birds, taking them fromnaked to casket. I have always been attractedto power in that way: fortressing my housewith brick fences and mines. The abusiveburn victims as boyfriends. Building a gardenall spring, only to maniacally cover it in poisonat the season’s end.I wonder how the oil sounds when it speaks.Perhaps quiet as a star. Perhaps sad as aWurlitzer. Perhaps it just wants to go home,moans and cries for its mother. Maybe it isnot what it seems: its dark marigold isits way of saying don’t leave me because of who I am. And animals are dying andthe algae has crumbled up in the shapeand color of human blood. I find, within all thesalvage and darkness, that it has fingers.I touch them lightly like I wouldtouch the skeleton of a person that Ionce loved, frightened and hopingthis one doesn’t belong to me, butit does.—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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Heather Bell: “It’s not that current events were ever something I wanted to dwell on, but I got to thinking about all the news articles out there with their sad lines and accusatory photos and I just wanted to stop all of it, right there. Is it wrong to see a deadly thing as beautiful? Maybe that was my point all along—poetry is like that: a news article gone awry that you and only you can rewrite to help someone get through it all, stop crying, begin taking his or her child to the grocery store again and just, in general, wake up.” (web)
Related* 2011 Pushcart Prize Nominees * “Haircut” by Heather Bell * “Umbrella” by Heather Bell
T.R. Hummer
SURGE
At the Senior Center, nobody is playing cards. The tables are folded and leaned against the wall; the Queen of Hearts is stuffed in a box upside-down and backward, jammed between a joker and the three of clubs. Down the street, the local diner is emptier than a Hopper painting, bacon grease coagulating in a cold tin can. No one in the shops, no one on the street except one black-masked old man in a worn peacoat with a dog-eared paperback stuffed in one pocket, sitting on a bus stop bench, clenching his fists and weeping. This is the way contagion works. The tears of the poet were in the reader all along.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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T.R. Hummer: “Having been writing poetry seriously for over 50 years, I have belatedly come to the same conclusion I came to when I was in my 20s: I don’t write poetry; poetry writes me. When I was young, I knew that but misunderstood it; now I misunderstand it in a completely different way. Then, I wanted poetry to remake me in some radical and idealized way that was beyond me to do on my own. Now, I feel it in what I imagine to be Heraclitus’s way: ‘Listening not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.’ At 22, I would have thought that sentence was a three-part non sequitur; now, I simply concur.”
Related* “Essays” by T.R. Poulson * “Listen to Your Union Workers” by T.R. Poulson * “Long Shot” by T.R. Poulson
Image: “Unsatisfied Externals” by J. Stormer. “The Room as We See It” was written by Andrew Payton for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Andrew Payton
THE ROOM AS WE SEE IT
In the memory of the roomwe find a doorwayto seeing the room as it is,as we had left it.We find a doorwayframed in revisions,as we had left it open to correction.Framed in revisionswe accept what shadowsopen to correctionin the light show of sleep.We accept the shadowsoutside the photograph.In the light show of sleep,sunlight is liberated.Outside the photographwe dress the room in color.Sunlight is liberatedthrough a window opened.We dress the room in color,in the memory of the room.Through a window openedto seeing the room as it is.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2022, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, J. Stormer: “I am astounded by the variety of thoughts and emotions that my print inspired in the poems submitted to this challenge. It was especially interesting to see what details others found compelling. Although there are a few poets and poems I have appreciated over the years, I have never formally studied poetry, or any form of literature. So, my choice is entirely subjective without reference to any criterion other than resonance with my personal and idiosyncratic feelings. All the poems I saw were interesting, and there were several that made choosing a single poem almost impossible. I think poetry is really meant to be heard, so I read the poems aloud to myself, and the way the poems sounded to me was also important in the final choice. This print is unique in my mostly representational body of work. It was inspired by a vague memory of things seen when I was too young (according to the experts) to have memories. Perhaps this was a dream then. The central etching was done first, but did not catch the feeling of the memory as I experienced it. Many months later, experimenting with colographs, I came up with the outer, more abstract part of the image, which to me suggests the dreamlike state. This poem, for me, captures the idea of of things seen with incomplete remembrance and subject to mental revision.”
Related* “Last Reach” by Wendell Smith * “Wildflowers” by Paul T. Corrigan * “Identity Politics” by Drea
Penny Harter
ODE TO A BAND-AID
Over the years, how often I have run to yourtin box or cardboard container, searching forthe perfect closure. Some of your kind are big enough for a skinned knee; others like thebutterfly can pull together delicate edges, skinto skin. How frantic we are as we grab whichof you we can find in our cabinet of magic,then tear the red thread of your wrapper downyour side as if it were a thin seam marked withblood that you might staunch.Not always welcome, though, is your after-lifediscarded on the ballfield dirt, dropped under thebleachers, or tossed into the waste beside the sickbed, your stained face open and staring at uswith proof of what is kept inside—blood, pus,any seepage from your hoped-for repair. Of allyour incarnations I love the butterfly the most,a winged hinting at the transformation you willbring to a child’s bloodied brow, or to the pit leftfrom an excised skin blemish taken for biopsy.Indispensable helper, how carefully I peel off theprotective papers on either side of your stickypromise to adhere, apply you just so, check youfrequently to be sure you aren’t soaked throughand need replacement. Even your name, band-aidis so right, your purpose to aid the band of human-kind, taking the place of dirty strips of cloth rippedoff a sleeve on the battlefield, or a roll of filmygauze too soon unraveling, lacking the glue thatbinds you to our flesh, dear band-aid, little friend.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Penny Harter: “After a pandemic year of writing frequent poems focused on offering hope to myself and others, I gathered those poems into a forthcoming collection. For some weeks after that, I stopped writing, but now it’s spring, I’m celebrating having gotten the Covid vaccine, and it’s time to move on into new work. The older I get, the more I realize we are a sum of all our memories, both easily accessed and well buried. In different ways, I feel these newer poems are simultaneously visiting both past and present.” (web)
Related* “Blue Sky” by Penny Harter * “Night Howls” by Penny Harter * “Writing Poems on Zoom with My Grandchildren” by Wendy Mnookin
Glenn McKee
LESTER’S CALLING
In the “Hey, You There!” of the momentLester thought it was the Lord calling.He turned, looked, saw nothing human,but there sprawled a pig in the guttermoaning in a language Lester didn’tunderstand but could speak if spokento by a friendly pig. This one wasn’tfirst-order friendly, sick as it looked,pig-gibberish erupting like weight-lifter’s grunts from its fat-fortifiedthroat, nostrils dilated as if searchingfor solace in barren underbrush, taila twisted story telling nothing exceptconfusion and spiraling morbidity.Lester at last broke his verbal silencewith words of assurance directed intothe gutter, their demeanor cloaked inthe modesty of a mare breaking windafter overindulging in bitter oats. Hethen paused at the gate of his mission,unlatched society’s scruples, finallykneeling beside the pig suffering deepin its own solitude and began soothingthe victim’s receding brow with caution.This action caused the pig to roll over,not unlike a dog asked to play dead ora lap cat wanting its stomach rubbed.Lester promptly responded, providingsolace where the pig indicated its painmade a home. At that moment Lester’slife changed for the better even thoughhe didn’t know it. All Lester knew ashe knelt was his love for this poor pig.—from Rattle #19, Summer 2003
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Glenn McKee: “I suffer from a 60-year-old habit of tearing poetry off my life. Not many pages of my life remain, and those that do hang on like surgical tape plastered on a hairy body. Nevertheless, I intend to write myself out of life.”
Related* “Another Night Nobody Came Alive” by Glenn McKee * “A Beauty Spot” by Glenn McKee * “Story Time at Grandpa’s” by Glenn McKee
Stephanie H. Fallon
INFIDEL
When your friend breaks up his marriageit hits your own like aftershocks, an affairthe kind of coastal earthquake that triggerstsunamis, sending waves to crash all the way across the ocean to another country, another continent, another woman, to you. To be a feminist in this scenario, I can’t dragthe other woman like I’d like to, but I do a deepdive of her Instagram anyway, sneering at her endless videos singing and playing guitar, the cheap floral dresses billowing on beaches, her bio with some precious reference to islandsand mainlands framed by too many emojis. She uses hashtags like #fallfashion and #bookstagram.She’s posted a photo with her husband, dressedfor Easter at their church, accepting complimentsabout them as a couple in the comments. That night, we learn this woman has been fucking our friend for a third of his marriage. That night, we sit on the phone while his wife drives until she runs out of gas, stranded after midnight on the highway. That night, we look at eachother while she tells us about the money, the confrontation,how, in a moment of panic, she hit him across the face with his phone, fending him off. “You better be careful,”he said, chillingly composed. “It wouldn’t look goodfor you if I had to call the police.” I try to remember whyI thought he was a good person—did someone tellme that? Was it my husband, who introduced us all thoseyears ago? Was it in actual words, or just the way I noticed my husband light up around him, enriched and full of faith? I think of the way he looked when we found out—not just deflation, not just sadness, but the kind of grief that confirms your deepest fear:that all the things you insisted on believing in—that dearand precious hope, that doubtful, tender thing—were never actually there after all. —from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Stephanie H. Fallon: “The way we tell love stories are too often focused on the early, personal stages: coming-of-age, sexual awakenings, first heartbreaks. We are trained to think of love in the first person singular, and that the story ends with the wedding. So it comes as a shock how deeply we can believe in the love stories of others—our family and friends, the people we hold most dear. This poem is about the faith we build through our promises to each other, a reminder that the vows we make root into each other, beyond just a partner, beyond even ourselves.” (web)
Related* “Kenai” by Katherine Fallon * “Anatomy of a Fustercluck” by Stephanie L. Harper * “The Tired Face of the Magician Rescues Untruths” by Stephanie Lester
Angela Janda
BY LUCK ALONE HE IS HERE
One morning last summer while I was sleepingmy three- and five-year-old left out the front doorand walked toward the park, up one side streetand across another, along the sidewalkof Comanche Avenue where cars go 40, 45in two lanes an arm’s length from the curb.Someone saw them and, I suppose, realizedthe not-quite-right of it: small humans out aloneat 6 a.m. I didn’t know they were gone untilone returned and woke me and brought meto the courtyard where I found two pressed-lipstrangers with his brother. Shortly after, at a publicpool, the older one had to be lifted up fromunderwater by his armpits by a lifeguard afterslipping from the end of a slide into a currentthat kept him down. A tangle of body heldin a blanket of blue. The expectation that hewould surface. The realization that he would not.My distance from him. A boy’s body at the mercyof the flood. I’d rolled over and shut my eyes;it was me who’d encouraged him to slide. Did Iknow? Should I have known? The whistle.The cold water of the question.—from Poets Respond
January 15, 2023
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Angela Janda: “Kyle Doan, 5, was swept away from his mother into California floodwaters on Monday. He has not been found. It is difficult to speak to such a tragedy—the boy was here, and now he is not here. Everyone made decisions with the best information they had. He was a kindergartener. Four foot, 52-pounds. Black puffer jacket. I dropped my 48-pound kindergartener in his green puffer jacket at the school playground this morning. The click of the car seat belt. Every effort we made to let them grow and keep them safe. This poem speaks to the terrible second-guessing; could I have done better? Was it enough? I have experienced enough near-misses as a mother to know the thin distance between here and out of reach.” (web)
Related* “Like Lichen Lingering” by Sarah E.N. Kohrs * “Time of My Life” by Angela Voras-Hills * “Delta” by Rachel Mallalieu
Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck
FREEDOM
Haight Street
The realtor claimed the flat was lived in onceby Janis Joplin, a quite common claim,we later learned. The tactic worked on us.We learned to overlook—that hint of fame!—the smell of gas, an awkward floor plan, sootthat never scoured. We dwelled not there but onour plum address and, when fall came, we boughtdark Goodwill coats, the nights much colder thanwe had foreseen. Through that long year, we readJacques Derrida, and smoked, and grew fresh thymeon the one sill with light. We baked wheat bread—well, one loaf anyway—and drank red wine,and each day died a bit—twenty, confused—two other words for nothing left to lose.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
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Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck: “I used to write fiction, and the first line of this poem was one I had in my head for years as the first sentence of a story. Nothing came of it. When I started to write poetry, I recalled the line—iambic, after all—and the poem followed quickly, almost as if it wrote itself. It knew what it wanted to be more than I did.”
Related* “Qí Páo” by Elizabeth T. Chao * “Naming the Beasts” by Elizabeth Morton * “Aposematic” by Elizabeth J. Colen
Anna M. Evans
STATE OF GRACE
for DF … and Wisconsin
I. Green LakeEven the clouds look different, more defined.The lake is silver, ripples flash like tealminnows before the bow; the wake, behindis jubilantly frothy. This is real.You tell me stories of your lake-life youth.They’re tinged with silver too and glow with joy.The small boat’s engine counters: this is truth.You tell me how you met your man, a boywho made you laugh at parties. This is breath.A light wind makes a halo of your hair.I feel at ease with, although far from death,And take a deep gulp in of summer airto ask the question that this day makes clear:would I be you if I had grown up here?II. Interstate 41Would I be you if I had grown up here—this land of cloistered dairy cows and lakes,straight roads that narrow till they disappear,skirted by fields of corn? For argument’s sake,the answer’s no, but maybe it’s a yes.Aren’t we all products of our circumstances?My English parents did, I must confess,endow me with a decent set of chancesthen add a lust to see and know and domore than they did, which hurled me overseas,led me to the place where I met youand brought me to your state. This notion freesme of the envy, loosens up the guilt.Each of us owns the hard-won world she’s built.III. Oshkosh IEach of us owns the hard-won world she’s built.Your house a twisted mirror of my own—slate-surfaced tables, lots of wood, no gilt—not perfect, but in every sense a home.You have a tomcat who prowls countertops,a dog who rests her muzzle on my knee.We sit on your deck in tee shirts, shorts, flip flops.I marvel at how much you are like me.Except …… out here, you always watch Fox Newsand like Oshkosh, your vote is ruby redwhile I’m a sworn-in member of the blues.I quiet the stubborn voice inside my headthat says we can’t be friends. I will not hear,won’t be constrained behind a wall of fear.IV. Lake Butte des MortsI won’t be constrained behind a wall of fearand yet the rope is slithering from my grip.You yell at your husband, but he doesn’t hear.Keen to impress, I hold on till I slip.Baptized in the shallow water of the lake,I scramble up, reborn. We shake with laughter.Whatever this friendship is, it isn’t fake.I shed my sodden clothes, know each time afterthat wearing them will summon up this dayand how my accent, too, began to slideinto the drawn-out O, the Wisconsin A.I’m holding on now, in it for the ride.The boat speeds from the boat launch and its silt.I shape my mouth—my new Midwestern lilt.V. Dockside TavernI shape my mouth around the Midwest lilt,self-conscious in a bikini at the bar—my clothes too wet to wear since I got spilled—and order lunch to go. We’re heading faracross the lake to somewhere you call Stretches.I have no data I can use to drawcomparisons. My overcharged brain sketchesand then discards ideas. When we unmoorI try to relax, and suddenly I do,my tense muscles uncoiling like a rope.The sun casts blessings from a sky so blueall apprehension vanishes in hopea body can surrender like a voice.Remember that contentment is a choice.VI. Oshkosh IIRemember that contentment’s about choices.The day before, we’d sat upon your bedand shared our girlhood secrets in low voices,a frank and warm exchange, which somehow ledto how the Supreme Court had undone Roe.You didn’t want your state to be that way,but when I tried to tell you how to showyour disapproval, you went on to sayyou couldn’t vote for Democrats—not ever—because we’re evil, arm around my shoulder.I let it hurt, but couldn’t let it severthe bonds we share or turn our friendship colder.You cannot understand what you don’t see.I have no way to make you think like me.VII. Lake Winnebago II have no way to make you think like me,but just for now, we’re visibly in sync,sitting up front like sisters, knee to knee.Your husband, steering, throws us a fond winkthen opens up the throttle to full force,and now the boat is bouncing through the wakeof one in front as he sets a direct courseto our destination. This is a vast laketo me, accustomed to the Jersey shore.This body of water somehow dwarfs the ocean,lacking the waves that find a sandy floor.I am so thrilled to yield to the motion,the motor thrumming like an inner voice in a rhythm that insists we all rejoice.VIII. Stretches IIn a rhythm that insists we all rejoicethe boat converges on our destination.I look around. It’s as if, with one voiceOshkosh’s boat-owning populationhas named this sandbar as the place to meet—pontoons and motor cruisers, large and smallare roped in lines together, like a fleetof sailing partygoers. Your friends calland we tie up then anchor next to them.Men stand in waist-deep water, beers in hand,and women lounge on swim decks. You say, Come!and help me lower myself onto the sand.The opaque water’s warmer than the sea.You’re showing me your life. It’s heavenly.IX. Dublin’sYou’re showing me your life. It’s heavenly,like how we visited the Irish barwhere your son cooks. You were so proud of me—your friend, the poet—as if I were a star.They asked me for a haiku, which I wroteand after that, my glass was always full.Why should it matter to me how you vote?An afternoon with you is never dull.It was a relief, not to have to think,to sing the lyrics to an Irish song,pull the tabs off lottery cards, and drink,forget the ways the country’s going wrong,put any hint of conflict out of mind,surrender to the moment and be kind.X. Fox River BrewerySurrender to the moment and be kind,which means that when you’re hungry you should eatand tip well. I was in the frame of mindto wear a sundress, something loose and sweet,so we went home, got changed, and did our hair,then found a table outside by the dock,took pictures perched upon a huge lawn chairand watched the sunset. The relentless clockhad never been so silent. Was it the band?The lively music somehow soothed my soul.Or was it that a day could be unplannedand still be perfect? I felt peaceful, whole.Of course, the salmon tacos were sublime.It was a day outside of rules and time.XI. Oshkosh IIIIt was a day outside of rules and time.We swayed into your house, a little drunk,and then we called as one, partners in crimefor eighties music—indie rock, not punk,and danced barefoot and wild like maniacs—Blondie, The Smiths, Aha, Kate Bush, The Cureand Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”while belting out the words we knew. I’m sureyour husband thought that we were both insanebut still played barkeep, audience, DJuntil our energy began to waneand then we put our teenage years awayamazed how much our music tastes aligned.You were the friend I’d always longed to find.XII. Stretches IIYou are the friend I always longed to find.We need sunscreen, you say, then spray it onmy skin, tan lines already well-defined.I slide back in the water, but you yawnand tell me that you’re going to take a nap.I dunk myself then swim around the boats,a slow and lazy breaststroke. Every lapyour husband checks I’m still okay….Your votesseem so incongruous, as if a songI loved turned out to have satanic meaning—how can I feel so comfortable, belongwith people whose beliefs are so right-leaning?You break the structure of my paradigm.Except for this one dissonance, we rhyme.XIII. Lake Winnebago IIExcept for that one dissonance, we rhyme. On the way back, your husband stops the boatin the middle of the lake, because it’s timeto watch the sun go down. We bob and floatas the sky turns pink, painted with copper streaksreflecting in the lake as burnished gold.I haven’t felt this calm inside for weeks.The beauty of it makes me feel less oldand that all things are possible. I didn’t knowhow much I’d love Wisconsin till I came,how hard it would be then to let it go,and that, back home, I’d never be the same,shaken forever from complacency,because you are so like, yet unlike me. XIV. New JerseyBecause you are so like, yet unlike meI’ve gifted you an audiobook I heardon motherhood and choice. It’s not a pleafor change, but if there’s power in a wordmaybe these ones will have some pull on you.I’ve never thought the world was black and white,so why accept it must be red and blue?I’ve changed my desktop image to the lakeat sunset so I never will forgetthe harmony. I think for both our sakewe always should be friends. I’m in your debtbecause you and Wisconsin made me seethere’s hope for this sweet land of liberty.XV.Would I be you if I had grown up here?Each of us owns the hard-won world she’s built,won’t be constrained behind a wall of fear.I tried to shape my mouth around the lilt,remember that contentment is a choice,and I’d no way to make you think like me.In a rhythm that insisted I rejoiceyou showed me how you live. It’s heavenly—surrender to the moment and be kind.And all these days were outside rules and time.You are the friend I’d always longed to find.Except for one big dissonance, we rhyme.Is there—because you’re like, yet unlike me—some hope for this sweet land of liberty?—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Anna M. Evans: “Recent polls suggest that about two thirds of Democrats do not have Republican friends. Bucking this trend, I spent five summer days in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, visiting a woman I first met outside of both our home states, and it was blissful, even though our political views are complete opposites. Poetry can be used to explore such large, complex subjects, and because form needs to match content, this subject called for a heroic crown of sonnets. I have been advised that some people on my side of the aisle may object to the congeniality of my poem, and that is, of course, part of the point.” (web)
Related* “Recovery at Lake Tahoe” by Alan Soldofsky * “The Adjunct’s Villanelle” by Anna M. Evans * “Zeitgeber” by Anna M. Evans
CooXooEii Black
THE MORNING YOU SAW A TRAIN OF STARS STREAKING ACROSS THE SKY
five years and you forgot the excitement of being on a mountain. early morning, before the hunt, blurred hours between night and day. the crickets chilled in silence. sheep ridge lay in front of you. you forgot the sensation of waiting on the sun. when its light-blue floods over the mountain and mixes with the dark, everything seems to ask for the lead. for the first time, you drove your own truck with your uncle in the passenger seat. you remember your first gun shot, elk drop, sip of beer, fish caught, and war-whoop. your uncle present for all. a small moment, sure, to be driving him but you’re proving your coming of age. he’s told you about your dad. said he’s a cool dude. that they text from time to time. he told you about cali and you can’t imagine your uncle in the city. you can’t imagine being with anyone on the mountain except this manwho used to parachute into smoke for a living.those mountains are ruthless to the clueless. you ask your uncle how he learned his way around them. you asked and you asked and you asked. he said be prepared to see anything. so from that moment forward you fixed your eyes onto the barely warming sky, your family, your people, younger siblings, your reservation, and every figure that has become a father, and you wait for the coming miracles.—from The Morning You Saw a Train of Stars Streaking Across the Sky
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CooXooEii Black: “I’ve always been interested in emotionally compelling stories, whether it was music, movies, or tv. I constantly got into trouble in elementary school for telling stories, singing songs, and acting. Then in high school, I watched a spoken word video, and for the first time, I found a medium that incorporated everything I love to do. So I put a few images down on a page, and I haven’t stopped since. Because it was God who gave me the ability to write, I daily return it to Him as a form of worship.” (web)
Related* “My Uncle Asked” by CooXooEii Black * “To My Hair” by Alvin Lau * “Volta” by M.K. Foster
Kwame Dawes
THE SLEEP OF PROPHETS
The silent prophetess sleeps well at night,for the pleasures of knowing are a kindof peace. While one is bleeding bloody,and an unfurled crowd turns intoa stream of blood, empty shells,the graffiti of disaster, the plagueof bouquets and solemn regrets,the prophetess is prepared for sorrow.She has wept loudly in her cloister,her fingers pulling at her unruly hair,her face purged of all paint.She is, she says to the burning city,like a woman in love with anunreachable heart. She carriesthe sweetness of her pain deep,and her body surrenders even asit sorrows; so each night shelays her head down, she sleepsthe deep untroubled sleep of knowing.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Kwame Dawes: “There seems to be a connection between being a consumer of music, literature, and so forth, and being a creator of it. For me, those two things seem to coincide. The mindset of the writer I can trace back to the mindset of wanting to control the narrative of my life, which never otherwise felt like something I could control.” (web)
Related* “Rope” by Kwame Dawes * “Sorrow” by Kwame Dawes * “Birthing” by Chisom Okafor
Charles Simic
THE VICES OF THE EVENING
The way the light and shadowGo on with their tug-of-warWhile the night busies itselfBehind our backsTo catch us by surpriseWith a single burnt matchstickLeft in someone’s hand,Who forgot why he lit it,Unless it was for childrenTo find their way Through weedy gardensAnd narrow back alleys—from Rattle #17, Summer 2002
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Charles Simic: “When you read a nice poem, somebody else’s poem, you become attuned to the words on the page. The language seems so rich, so beautiful, imagination making connections. You do need the reader as a collaborator. There could be other experiences beyond that of course. There might be some thoughts, some ideas emerging out of that, but I think the most basic fundamental thing is to give the reader something pleasurable.”
Related* “Fried Fish Cafe” by Charles Simic * “Midsummer” by Charles Simic * “The Way” by Mike White
Brendan Constantine
TRALEE, IRELAND, DAYS AGO
I’ve been traveling so longI forget what country this is. I can read all the signs in the hotel, but it’s not enough. It could be Ireland, or Heaven, or Mars. A black dog sits next to me with a white bib, wary, curious. I ask the concierge, “Is this a member of your staff?” “Ay,” he says, “A stray. Showed up days ago.” I finish checking in, drag a bunch of America to my room, take a nap. Later, when I step out for a walk, I find the dog waiting in the hall. “Days Ago,” I say aloud. “Your name is Days Ago.” He follows me to a park across the street, not quite at my side, but with me. I speak to him in a full voice, ask questions, give him time to answer, and interpret his silence. No one pays much attention, though a policeman tracks me for a moment. Likely because I’ve used the word “terrorism” a few times, loud enough to be heard across the fish pond. Days Ago, like all dogs, can’t talk or is choosing his moment. He withholds any opinion on terror, foreign or domestic. When I mention poetry, he yawns. Yeah, tell me about it. We find a bench and claim it. “You’ve done this before,” I say. It gets a smile. He does that donut thing his kind are so good at—cats, too—where they can lie on one side and still be sitting up. I naturally start stroking his neck and shoulders. “Did’ya hear about Mars?” I ask. “Once again, they think they found life but aren’t sure. Apparently, it’s harder to spot than anyone guessed.” His fur is so black, it hardly shines. I lose my hand in it. He’s tracking the policeman now. I’m thinking about space, how astronomers say almost a third of it is madeof something called Dark Matter, mass that swallowslight. Or drinks it. Or, I think now, loses light in its coat. “You know, Days Ago, whenever they don’t find life on other planets, I can’t help but think it means they also can’t find death. So far as we know, there’s no death anywhere on Mars. None on the moon, for that matter. A few people have died in space. But how do we know they didn’t bring death with them? They were people after all.” Days Ago is looking at me, right into my eyes. He clears his throat.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Brendan Constantine: “I have to say, I get a lot of inspiration from just going out and pretending I’ve never been to this planet before. It’s a great way to remember just how absurd, strange, beautiful, and unlikely everything is around you. If I can stay in that childish frame of mind, in that place of possibility where you watch somebody get into an elevator, the doors close, then open again and five people come out and it occurs to you ‘That’s where you go to become five people!’ Or you cut your hair and more grows out and you cut your hair and more grows out and you deduce, ‘The human head must be packed with hair.’ If I can practice daily astonishment, I find that I’m a little more pleasant, patient, and forgiving. You never know what you’re going to hear outside your window. Sometimes it brings a whole world with it.” (web)
Related* “So God Will Know You” by Brendan Constantine * “Harping” by Brendan Constantine * “From the Big Book of Games for Girls” by Brendan Constantine
T.R. Poulson
LISTEN TO YOUR UNION WORKERS
tale of a UPS Teamster
I, too, have flown Southwest. Scrambledfor my window seat, bedraggledby long lines like herds of cattle. Loved to travel. Loved to travel—to watch storm clouds unwind in bluebeyond the winglet. Never knewthe truth beneath those cow reviews. But now I do. But now I dothe math. I work for stockholderswho’ve never done my job. Boldermen and women open folders. Numbers smolder. Numbers smolderfacts. And I am one. Storms snarl flightsand labor. I, too, labor. Fightto tell my story. Overnightlast week, I tried. Last week I triedto make sense of numbers. My truck’s,573992, gold-stuckon her fender. Mine, on paychecks.She, an object. She’s an objectI love. The ones who make moneyplotted to replace her with onethat’s bigger. Clumsier. Their plantwisted in lines. Twisted in lineson maps—they’ve never seen my roadsthat wind narrow among redwoodsand slopes. Late one night, as fog flowedin dark, I slowed. In dark, I slowedto let a car pass, its lights soft-haloed. Blind in beauty, I stoppedclose to the edge. The damp-blurred dropamong limbs, lost. Among limbs, lostto lists, my truck held me safe. Sure.The car slipped by, so close its mirrorwhiskered my bumper. Disappearedin mist. In fear. In mist, I fearwhat might happen in anothertruck, less nimble. Made for otherterrain. My center managerchose to save her. Chose to save herfrom the flatbed trailer assignedto take her. 992 is minefor now. The last of her design.—from Poets Respond
January 8, 2023
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T.R. Poulson: “I am a union member, and I can relate to this article. Behind every business meltdown are workers who have tried to warn their companies what can happen when only short-term profits influence decisions. The form is a monotetra.”
Related* “They Say We Make Our Horses Run” by T.R. Poulson * “Essays” by T.R. Poulson * “Long Shot” by T.R. Poulson
Robert A. Ayres
IF YOU GIVE A GOVERNMENT TRAPPER A ROADKILL ARMADILLO
If you give a government trappera roadkill armadillo,he’s likely to take it home.And if he takes it home,and his wife’s not there,he’ll take it in the kitchen,stick it in her spaghetti pot—tail sticking out the top—fill the pot with water,turn the burner on,and cook it till it’s squishy.And if he cooks it till it’s squishy,and his wife’s not back,he’ll scoop the innards from the shellinto her Osterizer blender,add a little glycerin,and push “Puree.”And if she’s still not back,he’ll spoon dollops of pâtéinto tiny Tupperware containers,and stash them in her deep freezeuntil he needs it for bait.But if his wife comes home,that’s that.—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy & Western Poets
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Robert A. Ayres: “On the ranch, I hear lots of great stories. If I’m quick enough, I sometimes snatch a poem right out of the air, the way a second baseman nabs a line drive—that nifty SMACK! against his mitt. Other days, I take the bits and pieces home in my pocket to see what I can make of them.”
Related* “Roadkill, San Pedro” by Alexis Rhone Fancher * “Back to the Beginning Which Is to Say I Am the End” by Olabimpe Adedamola * “The Only Sign of Trauma” by Michelle Lesniak
Stephen Cohen
THE CLOSING LIST
turn the signs, close the blinds, lock the door count the till, clean the grill, sweep and mop the floor put all the receipts in a drawer put the dry goods in a bin, put the wet goods in the walk-ins clean the ovens and the countertops and the silver and the pans and pots turn off the dishwashing machine after you get everything restaurant clean prepare a statement for the bank, put the money in the safe say goodnight to the help, thank you, you don’t need their help anymore take off your restaurant clothes, move across the restaurant floor there’s no restaurant here anymore count the till, clean the grill, sweep and mop the floor change the signs, shut the blinds, put a padlock on the door there’s no restaurant here anymore, anymore, anymore—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Stephen Cohen: “I am a writer and a performing, recording, and visual artist. I write poetry because it is one of the best ways for us human beings to express our thoughts and feelings. ‘The Closing List’ directly addresses life in these historic times.” (web)
Related* “American Sonnet in Which the Senate Floor Becomes a Silent Disco” by Bailey Cohen * “Career-Minded” by Bruce Cohen * “Quotidian” by Daryl Jones
Mary Ellen Redmond
THE SISTER OF ICARUS
At the craft store, two angel wingsreveal themselves under the sheershirt of the girl in front of me.Clear indigo lines etched over bothshoulder blades and beyond, each feathermeticulously outlined. I remember herapple-white skin, chestnut hair, the soundof coins clinking and her slipping awayswinging her bag of purchases:feathers, glitter, and glue.—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012
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Mary Ellen Redmond: “I write poems to stay sane, saving thousands of dollars in therapy. I support this habit by teaching twelve-year-olds to read critically and write well, dot their i’s and cross their t’s. Along with two fat and happy cats, I live on Cape Cod, a glacial afterthought that juts into the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts.”
Related* “Poem Written in the Sixth Month of My Wife’s Illness” by Ellen Bass * “Altar Boy in Tennis Shoes” by Tim Sproul * “The Miracle of Naming” by Dick Westheimer
Danielle Carne
HOW TO BECOME A HAPPY WOMAN, E.G.
First, get a hose.Even if there’s a water shortage due to drought,Stand around dousing the grounds for hours and hours.I mean relentlessly. Grow moss, remembering you earned it by not showeringDuring the pandemic.Second, forget everything you’ve been told. (Except The foregoing.)Smoke and drink whatever and whenever you want.Stay up all night every night watching movies,Almost religiously.Lean hard on Australians; they dominate the natural horror flick.Third, buy white begonias and find sweet summer dresses online. If anyone asks, explain it’s your only life. Place orders to arrive each Friday,By routine delivery.While waiting, don’t do a thing you don’t feel like doing and never,Ever regret it.Finally, do a deep squat in the garden shaded by the tree. (Oh, And also, no undies.)As you dig the begonias some holes, the aromas rising from Under the dresses will blend with the scents of drenched dirts And roots and worms, deliciously.Sweating, wet yourself down with the hose, then get some sleep.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Danielle Carne: “As a professional arbitrator and mediator, I resolve other people’s conflicts. Poetry must be where I work on my own.” (web)
Related* “An Incomplete List of Last-Minute Allegations” by Danielle DeTiberus * “Prayer for an Inmate of RVJDC” by Danielle Spratley * “Howie Night at the Drottkvaett” by Burt Beckmann
Alan Shapiro
FAITH
In no beyond or elsewhere all too brightor dark to see by; not in the chilly joyof preemptive mourning, the voodoo exchange of veilfor ghostly face, but in the veil itself,the dazzle of quick shade becoming redtippedflare of wing igniting as the hawkbanks in the last light before it drops from sightto rise again with something in its talons;and also in the talons, in the stunned thingstill twitching, though it can’t escape, because“The beauty of nature is the silence of God,”and silently just now across the valley,down the mountain pasture, the shadow of windis grass that turns grass into shadowy water,setting the green adrift with greener rippling.—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
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Alan Shapiro: “To me, the only thing that has kept me going through the years, as a writer, is that deep, private, self-forgetful joy that I feel when I’m working. When you sit down at the table and it’s eight o’clock in the morning and then you look up and it’s, God, it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. All that time has gone by as if in a single moment. And in that prolonged moment, you were completely given over to the task at hand, you were joyful, even if you were writing about how joyless your life has been. Because you had totally forgotten everything but the poem you were trying to make.”
Related* “People Get Ready” by Alan Shapiro * from A Conversation Between Alan Shapiro and Alan Fox * “Gabriella” by Peter Coghill
Anders Carlson-Wee
OSCAR’S INVENTION
Fuck no she didn’t leave me over money. She left me cause I have no ass. It’s true—a belt holds on my hips about as good as an oiled-up pole dancer. That’s why I invented these strapless suspenders. Can’t see em, can you? Good, that’s the idea. Almost went bankrupt makin the prototype. My wife kept sayin What suspenders?— you aint wearin nothin. But riddle me this: Are my jeans pooled at my feet? I swear, bonafide genius dumbfounds belief with simplicity. Same goes for the truth. Like if I told you my wife left me cause I got less milkshake than a garter snake, you’d say there’s gotta be more to that story. Like what? I go to work one day and come back home to no trace of her. No photos. No toothbrush. Not even the carrots she raised in the garden beds, just holes in the earth like buckshot where she plucked em free. And of course, she got custody. And the house eventually, which, I’ll admit, I mortgaged to pay for the patent. You think that was the dagger? Here I am workin to cure auto-pantsin for the assless and she’s fussin over a little loan? Yes or no: could I win her back if I doubled down and got those silicone implants? Fine, shake your head, but I don’t think you respect how bad it is when God forgets to blow up your balloons. Hell, I’d show you, but these suspenders are a bitch to get back into.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Anders Carlson-Wee: “As the son of two Lutheran pastors, I grew up on sermons. I tried hard to not listen, especially during my teen years, but I couldn’t resist a good story: my parents both preach in a personal narrative mode, telling stories of daily human experience as a means to evoke the sacred. This preaching style has had a large impact on my writing style. As for why I write—if I understood that, I don’t think I’d have the drive to spend the energies of my life pursuing it.” (web)
Related* “Where I’m At” by Anders Carlson-Wee * “Signs” by Kai Carlson-Wee * “Reintroduction to Poetry” by Adam Szetela
Alison Davis
CHRISTMAS VIGIL AT SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
At a wobbly metal table, I sit sketchingchalk dudleyas and milkweed. A womanbehind me explains loudly into her phonethat every seat on every flight on every otherairline is booked. All the rentals cars in the countyare taken. The hotels that shuttle to and fromthe airport are all full. More people keep flowingin through the double doors, eager-eyedand flanked with festive baggage. An agentwith a megaphone continuously announces thatall flights are canceled and no new reservationsare being made. The woman behind me cries.I consider for a moment asking her to come homewith me, imagine for a moment spending a nightwith someone I might love, comfort, even touchin some small way. She shuffles off before I can offergood tidings. I start shading the delicate blossomsof a globe gilia. A mother lays her coat on the groundand changes her newborn baby’s diaper then tucksthe barely earth-kissed body into a stroller to sleep.They have nowhere to go. My ride arrives.The fog is too thick to see the stars.—from Poets Respond
January 1, 2023
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Alison Davis: “I spent two days at the Sacramento airport, trying to get a Southwest flight to Kansas City. We were all sent home on the first day and told to use the website or call customer service to rebook. The service line and the website were both down, so I went back to the airport to try and get us new flights. When I arrived, all the departure signs still showed that flights were leaving. By the time I left, each one had been canceled. While I waited to get picked up, I drew in my sketchbook, eavesdropped, daydreamed, and felt the weight of displaced people everywhere.” (web)
Related* “The Insurrectionists Were Right” by Alison Luterman * “Fog” by Alison Luterman * “Elegy for Philip Levine” by Dante Di Stefano
Samuel A. Betiku
HOW TO END A YEAR
Your silhouette arched on the railing of the balcony takes stock of space and time, the world so far-flung and your eyes so far-reaching you mistake yourself for God, though your hands are full of holes, fault lines riddling the tract of a life you would gladly exchange for another. But now is not the time for penance but for the savor of grace in the air. The city alive at your feet, pulsing blend of sound and light, a wild stallionbroken for you. How in the house the boombox breathes in tandem with the tangos of thoseyou love, who beam like characters at the end of a fairy tale. Isn’t this lilting world shaped as an open door? You can walk through it and never come back. Overhead, the dusky sky bursts into a fit of colors, fire flowers blooming from an orchard of mirth, and a time flows into another like a dazzling river beckoning you to drink.—from Poets Respond
December 31, 2022
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Samuel A. Betiku: “During a class, a lecturer I greatly admire said: ‘It’s a dangerous thing to live in the past; don’t allow yourself to be left behind.’ This poem was the aftermath of the impression those words had on me.”
Related* “A River of Sounds” by Samuel A. Betiku * “Representation” by Samuel Hughes * “Klimt at the Musee Maillol” by Janalynn Bliss
Richelle Buccilli
DEAR INSTAGRAM
moms, scrolling at naptime, or let’s be honest,scattered among the toys freshly dumpedas he moves on now to couch pillows, tossedon the rug to dive headfirst onto, I’m wantingto be like you: nearly perfect and organized,with colorful ideas, impeccable backdrops,every photograph aesthetically pleasingto the eye—where do you find such figurinesfor your Montessori matching games, link toyour son’s denim shorts please, can you please sharethe color of your walls, your house is house GOALS—or brave enough to bare my worst days,the mom who films herself on TikTok, admits she doesn’t like playing with her toddler, why should she hand her husband a diaperwhen no one is handing her diapers all day? reading the caption of a birth announcementthat mom and baby are doing amazing,how she lists what she remembers from early postpartum: couldn’t sit, bleeding everywhere,burns to pee, anxiety, no sleep, swollen nipples—what part of us do I show the world?When I stop for a look, the bathroom mirrorfoggy with steam, afternoon light spilling in like a flame, I like to tell myself it’s this: my toddler filling small cups with bathwater,his face and arms only seconds ago smeared with yogurt and peanut butter, somewheredownstairs the painting has still fallen from the wall,red play dough sits out as it hardens, orange peels lay like curled ribbons on the kitchen floor.My phone beside me, I take a photograph ofmy son and me, our reflection in the bathroom mirror,smiling to prove it. —from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Richelle Buccilli: “The early years of staying at home with young children can be both beautiful and brutal, and sometimes social media only shows what’s beautiful. However, social media has also begun showing more of the realities of parenthood. I’m thankful for this. Similarly, poetry helps me share my own genuine experiences as a mother. I can’t wait to share these poems with my children someday.” (web)
Related* “Sparrow” by Richelle Buccilli * “Tiffani’s Testimony at the 11:30 a.m. Service” by Laura Gregory * “Clay” by Taylor Supplee
Image: “Humid” by Joshua Eric Williams. “Old Testament Family Tree” was written by Kid Kassidy for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Kid Kassidy
OLD TESTAMENT FAMILY TREE
You know you got yourself a rotten fruit when that thing ain’t even seven years oldLookin’ on up at you with spooky old eyes, wine bottle glass green like her no-good mama,Mouth like she drank the whole damn thing.What’s your rotgut instinct tellin’ you to do—Take the thing out back with your god’s own shotgun?Or—but what kinda god would ask you to pimp Issac out like that?Well, your god eats it up with a knife and forkHootin’ and hollerin’ with his big, grabby hands:Moriah! Moriah! Virgin on a Mountaintop!But of course the angels, always with the angels,And now you gotta live with this thing crawling around in your walls,Reborn from the sons of God and daughters of Man,Half-sexed and stronger than you, now, that same wild mouth and dark eyes,A new crazy, angry bite that’s got you sayin’ what was said approximate to you:Better watch yourself, girl, end up out on your ass!She laughs. No one ever warned you they laugh.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
November 2022, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Joshua Eric Williams: “I chose ‘Old Testament Family Tree’ because the poet captures the complicated atmosphere of the image with a voice that is not merely conflicted at the surface but is also troubled into searching every confusing layer of disappointment, faith, and doubt without a need to resolve these things, which allows the voice to take on humor as well as withering social commentary alongside sincerity, making the persona even more nuanced and believable.”
Related* “In a Moment” by J. A. Lagana * “Emotional Self-Regulation, with Birds and Gifted Child” by Sean Kelbley * “Greetings Unanswered” by Joshua Martin
Tina Barry
THE LITTLE I REMEMBER
for Robert Herman
Twice a year if sleep eludes, I type your nameinto the internet, add “obit,” assuming the dark locusconsumed you. On your Facebook pagea girlfriend had posted pictures of your last daystogether, waist-deep in the Adriatic,arm in arm at an exhibit of your photos. The scar above your wincing smile held the same power it had 40 years ago, when I’d board a bus for a two-hour tripto your gray-edged room in the Lower East Side. I brought offerings: perfect avocados,tickets to plays I couldn’t afford,my young body to shine beneath your window’spleat of moon. I tried to be enough. Years later, after I had married, I wheeled my baby past a coffee shop, where I spottedyou, huddled at a table for one, eyes lockedon an invisible enemy. My grief sat heavy. Relief, too,as I peered into the pink carnationof my daughter’s face, gratefulyou weren’t her father.Oh, Robert. You had asked meHow do you enjoy life? I wanted to believeyou had found the answer,but you scribbled the same questionon a note right beforeyou jumped. —from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Tina Barry: “I knew Robert Herman briefly when we were in our twenties. I liked him a lot, but his depression robbed our moments together of any joy. When the internet became a way to snoop, I’d check on him. I read of his success as a photographer, and discovered pictures of him with a partner. It’s comforting to know that even if he succumbed to the sadness, he experienced moments of pleasure, too.” (web)
Related* “My Four-Year-Old Asks What Happens …” by Tina Parker * “The Coast Starlight” by Tina Mozelle Braziel * “Dear Morning Commuters” by Tina Schumann
Bhavika Sicka
A GHAZAL OF MANGOES
Summertime, our kitchen counters spill with mangoes:himsagar, hapus, chausa, langra, and other mangoes.Ma and I, we ride on a rickshaw to Gariahat baazaar,where vendors sell cratesful of plums, lichis, and mangoes.Ma squeezes the fruits tenderly to learn if they are plump.Her saree is block-printed with paisleys, upturned mangoes.Later, I slip into my boyfriend’s flat. In his drawing roomhangs a silk painting: Nur Jahan in an orchard of mangoes.He says he wants to end things, and my throat tightenslike I’ve swallowed hard, fibrous pits of ripe mangoes.In Kyasapura, a farmer shields his eyes, surveys his trees.He grows badami: Karnataka’s prized alphonso mangoes.This year, the rain from the cyclone has ruined his yield.His hopes shrivel up and drop off like blighted mangoes.One Sunday, after Math class, my tutor offers me tea:cha and sondesh—crumbled cheese and pureed mangoes.He asks me to wait after the other pupils leave. He offersme a long hug, says my breasts are firm like mangoes.Bhavi, do you remember what Ma said? A woman givesup a part of herself if she chooses to go where a man goes.—from Poets Respond
December 27, 2022
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Bhavika Sicka: “In Karnataka, the recent cyclone-induced rainfall resulted in fungal diseases to mango crops, shattering the dreams of farmers who were hoping for a good harvest this year. In another news, the headmaster of a school in Mandya, Karnataka, was taken into custody for sexually exploiting his female students.” (web)
Related* Ten Haiku by Kakul Gupta * “Nine Surprising Things Worth More Than This Shimmering Metal” by Hannah V. Norman * “The Long Sleep” by Ankur
Raistlin Allen
BLACK IS NOT A COLOR
I.The bossy kid with the runny nose two seats in front of me in the third grade was the first to break the news. It can’t be your favorite color. That doesn’t make sense.You have to pick something else.I picked it anyway, taking my marker with childish rebellion andshading my paper darker than dark.If it’s not a color, why is it part of the box? I asked,but he was already complaining to the teacher about me.II.At twelve, I began to notice I could not hear myself in the shapes of the words people usedto describe me, could notrecognize myself in family pictures;my childhood wish to master the superpower of invisibility was granted, in the cruel way faery princes trick humanchildren.For years, I searched for myself in the spaces between thewords I read, curled up in an unlit room.I grew to cover myself in black, erasing the deceitful curves anduneasy lines of my adult body.III.Eighteen, I will never forget the cave in Ireland where the tour guidetold us it was very important to keep the lights on, becausetrue black made people insane. For a second, he let the lights goto exemplify this, and my eyes lost purchase, the world spun.I was afraid but I was also free, my mismatched parts absorbing back into the dark: head of a woman, heart of a man, soul of neither. IV.The curve of someone’s body has never made me stir,even when my neighbors’ gardens were shot through withlittle red buds of desire, for touching and sucking that mademy stomach turn.I thought they were lying when they told me I had something missing; no matter how my fingers groped I could not findthe hole.V.My heart has never sped at the thought of another person;I have never craved the presence of another body beside meupon waking.They say this means I must be lonely,that I just don’t know what love is.But sometimes when I stay up past dark on the roof withmy sister,sometimes when I walk alone on the street and watch the lightsgo out one by one, when the rich dark slant of a chord of faraway music hitstoo close to the bone and fills me to the brim,I know that they are wrong.VI. Thirty-two, in June, I travel freshly tarred streets the same inky hue as my boots,walking through rainbow banners, the smell of air after rain,the sounds of celebration buzzing through me, filling me withsomething like kinship, like hope.If the people dotting the streets in one another’s arms can be acceptedfor who they are, maybe someday I can be forgiven for who I am not.—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
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Raistlin Allen: “Poetry to me is pure magic; it is the closest thing to a religion that I have. It shows me the outlines of something, and if I can chase it fast enough, I can capture this ethereal thing in form, staple it down in words. It allows me to say the unsayable, to become the magician. To examine my own wounds and to attempt to heal them; to brush up against souls miles away and feel the reverberance.” (web)
Related* “Allen Ginsberg’s Dead” by M.L. Liebler * “Floaters” by Allen C. Fischer * “Farrier” by Cal Freeman
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
THE UKRAINIAN FLAG STARES THROUGH THE BALSAM FIR FROM LARRY’S TREES
just take it he said & I doubted generosity are you sure? still $30 short I’ve learned nothing is free in this country his white mustache curledto a smile I’m Larry & thisis the south & these are my treeshow easy to claim what soil gives to own trees & bodies to give them away to strangersso my children can hangthe shatterproof ornaments & ask for morelight while in Ukraine the bulbs won’t spark the heatwon’t radiate the soil will staysnow-covered & theirs &in my house strings & stringsof electric rainbow dazzle trail the evergreen & walls & windmy children’s small limbs here in Arkansas it’s barely coldenough to light a firebut we can & do with oak& crabapple we homeits added glow so everythingsmells of invited smoke & pine not invaded smoking sky where the windows flicker with candlelight& shellings & tomorrowI will bake gingerbread & fry latkes & light the candlesforbidden in my Soviet childhood tomorrow I will prayto a god I don’t believe infor more miracle tomorrowI will still have been born from darkness & wick & tonight when I lift my daughter to place the silver star on the highest branch& my American mother-in-law takes a photothe only light will be the yellow-blue horizon of the flagfrozen in the window behind us—from Poets Respond
December 25, 2022
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Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: “The missiles continue to fall on Ukraine. Millions lose power and heat and even water. It is well below freezing all across the country. On Christmas Eve, when many families in the US and around the world gather around a tree decorated by hundreds of lights, in my birthplace, Ukraine, this day will mark ten months of brutal, full-scale war. It is too easy to grow used to the barrage of terrible news, too easy to forget that during this time of celebration, suffering continues. If you are able, consider contributing to an aid organization that helps those who are in Ukraine and refugees trying to flee. I recommend Ukraine TrustChain, an all volunteer-run nonprofit started by Ukrainian immigrants in the US, they work with local volunteers on the ground, going directly into areas hard to reach by larger international organizations. TrustChain provides urgent food, medical supplies, and transportation to safer regions.” (web)
Related* “Mir in Ukraine” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach * “To Combat Antisemitism, Write a Villanelle” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach * “Every Musician’s Suicide Makes Me Think” by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
AT THE OFFICE HOLIDAY PARTY
I can now confirm that I am not just fatterthan everyone I work with, but I’m also fatterthan all their spouses. Even the heavily beardedbear in accounting has a lithe otter-like boyfriend.When my co-workers brightly introduce meas “the funny one in the office,” their spousesgive them a look which translates to, Well, duh,then they both wait for me to say something funny.A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the barto further punctuate why I sometimes hate livingin this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors.I don’t know how to look like I’m not struggling.Sometimes on the subway back to Queens,I can tell who’s staying on past the Lexington stopbecause I have bought their shoes before at Payless.They are shoes that fool absolutely no one.Everyone wore their special holiday party outfits.It wasn’t until I arrived at the bar that I realizedmy special holiday party outfit was exactly the sameas the outfits worn by the restaurant’s busboys.While I’m standing in line for the bathroom,another patron asks if I’m there to clean it.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz: “I find that if I write honestly about an experience which was really horrible and uncomfortable, it will have the pleasant aftermath of coming out as pretty funny. I love poetry’s ability to show me that my worst experiences are usually much more surreally absurd and humorous than I had ever realized when I was living them.” (web)
Related* “Things That Happen During Pet Sitting …” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz * “Op-Ed for the Sad Sack Review …” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz * “The Dirigible” by Kenneth O’Keefe
Guinotte Wise
THE CANDY-APPLE RED-ORANGE 1949 FORD HOT ROD CUSTOM CRUISER SAYS GOODBYE
We called it a lead sledlow and slow, but it wasonly one of those. It woulddo 100 with no exertion.Chopped and loweredheaders and pipes let you knowit was around, like a summerstorm announces itselfnot always unwelcomepainted red-orange like anaging hussy with too muchrouge, but floor that suckerand it was young againready for the night, the streets, a show-off drag witha fancy Ram pickup whosedriver was open-mouthed inthe rearview mirror, or slowmaneuvers around the townsquare. A rebuilt ’88 Mercuryunder the hood, carbureted.A kid behind the wheel, a kidfrom the fifties who wanteda do-over, a mulligan, just onemore shot at all of it again. The blue-dot taillights saidgoodbye as it slowed to turnthe corner to old yesterdays.Good horses, dogs and hotrod cars are truly missed.—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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Guinotte Wise: “I had a ’49 Ford in high school, primered, lowered, heads, carbs, pipes, etc. Very Rebel Without a Cause. But I did well in English class. And I liked poetry. That was 67 years ago. I never gave up writing and I acquired another ’49 Ford along the way, and it underwent a lot of changes, like me. But it got beautiful. I sold it this year, and as the new owner slowed at the corner, the (illegal) bluedot taillights flickered at me. I went in and wrote this poem.” (web)
Related* “Locked Brakes on Blacktop” by Guinotte Wise * “The Why of Bull Riding” by Guinotte Wise * “Summer” by Graham Linthorst
Image: “Humid” by Joshua Eric Williams. “In a Moment” was written by J. A. Lagana for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2022, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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J. A. Lagana
IN A MOMENT
any outdated certainty runs weaklike a walker’s grasp as the dog, a greyhound or maybe the more reliable retriever, momentarily splits & in that secondof letting goheads toward the muddied fieldwith little consideration of whether it is best to stay or to (momentarily) flee. Oh muddied footprints.Oh round circular trees. Such beauty& freedom. Such feeling. In one split-secondthe charcoal spread of morning,the way a day leans toward grey.Ribbon -swirl along illuminated horizon.What comes afterwardsis anybody’s guess.The pausea mid-point. Consider how a life might play out.What is constant in a moment?A tree, the cement & tangle, the ability to let go.Storm & swivel & stream & doubt,scribble of ribbons, no bungle or reassurance—imagine the self, you— rooted, blossoming.—from Ekphrastic Challenge
November 2022, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “It’s difficult to capture a sense of motion, of momentum, with only words, and J. A. Lagana does it so effectively here, giving the reader the feeling of being right there in the ‘charcoal spread of morning,’ experiencing ‘the cement & tangle, the ability to let go.’ Joshua Eric Williams’ image strikes me as expressing both movement and stillness, and ‘In a Moment’ reflects that contrast. The tone of the poem, and the artwork, is perfectly summed up in its succinct and gorgeous last line–‘you– rooted, blossoming.’”
Related* “A Caricature” by Bola Opaleke * “The Widower” by Nick Bertelson * “This Room” by Devon Balwit
Dick Westheimer
PRAYER FOR THE UNRUNG BELL
Only entropy comes easy
—Anton Chekhov
Here’s the good news:The universe is expandingfaster than it runs to nothing.The other news: there is no way to unchew a sandwich, to turnwhat’s in our bowels back to bread and burgers, no wayto cook the burgers back into cows the buns back to flour and yeast.We can’t unfroth that yeast or turn the wheat into soil and water, nor can we return the cows to being calves, the calves to mother’s milk,the milk to cud, the cud to grazing,the rain to fall up to the clouds. As for the soil? It is made of the fallen, the undone, the remains of rotting flesh, the dust of mountains, all the ravenous micro-beasts digesting buried kings and fallen oaks and shoemakers and shamans and what raptors leave behind—all these thus consumed called on to make a bed for seed and root, for waves of grain for the towering pines we hew into floors for our homes and pallets to lie upon and cradles for our babies who might grow to be poets,poets who will make whole shattered glass, unstir honey from hot tea, praise entropy, lasso receding stars, and laud heretics who make virtue from the fragments of a dying cosmos,disbelieve popes and princes,and wander to places where no one knows things fall apart.They return with a message: There is no arrow of time. Chaos has a brother who knows how to turn sandstorms into skyscrapers.This must be true or else, how could I rise each day and greet the raging fires,the rasping breath of my dying father, war drums pounding, women stripped of their babies, glaciers sliding to the sea?Yet, the cosmos grows possibility and we and the expanding universe arehopeful pieces of the always falling apart.—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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Dick Westheimer: “I began this poem fascinated with the images on entropy that came to mind—especially the physical state of things which inevitably moves from order to chaos. This is ‘the other news’ of the poem and once I began reflecting on a few of these—the un-chewing of a sandwich, the un-stirring of honey from tea—the poem took me down a Calvin-and-Hobbes wagon ride of cascading images. At the bottom, the poem found hope—I found hope—for the restoring of order out of chaos: hope in the form of poets and soil and babies and heretics—and the news that the universe is expanding. I am temperamentally a Cassandra so discovering ‘hopeful pieces’ in a poem that began with how things fall apart was a welcome surprise.” (web)
Related* “My Father Transformed by Dying” by Dick Westheimer * “Into the Metaverse” by Dick Westheimer * “The Nearly New Moon and the Crescent Earth” by Dick Westheimer
James Davis May
SENTIMENTAL HOGWASH
A man who hasn’t thought seriously about killing himselfin over a year walks out of the living room as the father in the movie stumbles toward the bridgein order to jump from it. There are, after all, things to do in the kitchen, pans to soak and plates to rinse, and no one is watching him, or the movie for that matter, his wife trudgingthrough a stack of student papers, his daughter drawing dragons on a sketch pad, and the feeling unfurling like a fever was so mild at first it seemed silly, something that until then was dormant but now threatened to make him cry, and though he isn’t afraid to cry in front of his family, he didn’t want to this time because they might worry, and then he would worry that the depression was coming back again.It’s snowing in the movie, the actor’s face obscuredby a five o’clock shadow and a sizzling agonythat’s surprising for a supposedly heartwarming film.The lie is that seeing the world without youwill make enduring this world easier,that you’re some sort of butterfly flapping its wingsbirthing not a hurricane but a music that saves everyone you love from ruin. The truth is the world would be just as terrible without you as it is with you in it, give or take a little pain and pleasure. There’s nothing left to doin the kitchen, so the man sits back downand watches the father and the angel shiveringas they save each other in different ways, and then the man’s wife looks at him and says,“Thanks for coming back. We get lonelywhen you leave,” and he apologizes and promisesto stay until the end, a scene that he knows is sappy but loves anyway, even though it will make him cry a little, just loudly enoughthat he can’t pretend that no one notices him.—from Poets Respond
December 20, 2022
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James Davis May: “It’s the 75th anniversary of It’s a Wonderful Life‘s wider release. This year was my first time watching the film since recovering from a major depressive episode, and I was struck by how George Bailey’s near-suicide scene depicts despair.” (web)
Related* “Red in Tooth and Claw” by James Davis May * “Chinese Lunar Rover Finds Strange ‘Gel-like’ Substance on Moon” by James Valvis * “Which Do You Value More?” by James Davis May
Cindy Veach
SOME THINGS I NEVER TOLD ANYONE
When I begged my parents to let me go on the Mousetrap rideI didn’t know that at each and every hairpin turn half my car would hangfor what seemed minutes in mid-airbefore jerking right or left then back to a too short straight away before the next turn and the nextwhy did I tell them I loved iton that holiday when my father forgot the Nikon its rolls and rolls of 35mm filmall our vacation photoson the hook of a stall door in a London men’s roomremembered when we were in the Tube hurtling toward Heathrowhe lost his temper yelled at us why did I think it was my faultI picked that coaster rideto show my parentsthat their pre-teen daughtercould go it alonedizzy with shamewhite-knuckled I spotted them far below on trusted groundclung to their faces why did I keep it to myselfwhen we stayed that nightat the highway motelroom doors open to the outdoors and I was helping carry our stuff board games piledto my chinand lost my waypicked the wrong doorpushed with my foot and walked in on a naked couple limbs entwinedthe woman looked right at meall those game boxes in my armsChutes and Ladders Candy Land Life each sharp edge marking the tender insides of my forearms my father left us standing there in the London Tubesix kids my mother her massive canvas bag of passports snacks ticketsshe looked right at mepulled the white sheet over their tangled legs I could not turn awayI’d never seen my parents touchI gripped that Mousetrap’s safety barhe caught the next train back to that stop that men’s room the camera goneI saw I saw I sawthey were grown upsas beautiful as statues in museumsI still blame myself—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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Cindy Veach: “I believe that memories choose us and not the other way around. This poem braids together three memories that refused to leave me alone. I felt intense guilt and shame about each one of these memories and, true to the poem’s title, never shared them with anyone.” (web)
Related* “When Your Mother Asks if You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist” by Cindy King * “In Response to Anyone Who Asks” by Josh Rathkamp * “The Sorrow’s Mine” by Sue O’Dea
A.E. Hines
THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN MOORE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
These must be dark times if you thinkshooting up a substation and blacking outthe lights will shut-down a drag show.Have you ever been to a drag show?Yes, there will be singing. Even in the dark.Unflappable queens black-belting Beyonceand Madonna, hovering in the quiveredglow of bar top candles, silver beamsfrom a hundred mobile phones showeringthem like bedazzled songbirds, lashesglittering like wings and lifting themfrom a thin nest of stars on the soft breezeof applause and our waving dollar bills.We’ve labored in the night long enoughto know how to fashion our own halos.Make our own light. I doubt you’ve everdropped a copper penny to preservea vase of daises, or know a jigger of vodkabrings valentine roses back to their feet,but know you’ll find no wilting flowers here,just at the edge of the stage. With its greenstiffened spine, the boozy and voluptuoustulip takes no bows. With outstretched petalsoutlasting gravity and death, it refuses to bend.—from Poets Respond
December 18, 2022
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A.E. Hines: “The recent domestic terrorist attack on two power substations in rural North Carolina, and its proximity to wide-spread messages of hate and intolerance surrounding a local drag performance, left thousands without power for days, and stoked fear among the local queer community—especially in the wake of the recent mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado. Of course, the show (picketed by fanatics) still went on in Southern Pines—even in the dark—as the drag artists calmly led attendees in a sing-a-long under the spotlights of their patrons’ iPhones. This reminded me of the lines by Bertolt Brecht: ‘In the dark times / will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.’ And this became the spark for this poem.” (web)
Related* “Deictic” by A.E. Stallings * “Lockdown Puzzle: Hokusai’s Great Wave Off Kanagawa” by A.E. Stallings * “Moments of Silence” by Joanna Lee
Rita Mae Reese
ON THE PROBLEMS OF EMPATHY
1 Twice a year the orphans come. Like Job’s children, pawns in a bet made with the Devil. 2 You and your mother watch from the porch as Father Whiskey’s car rolls up the long dirt drive. The orphans inside ignore the fields, the cows, the pond, the patch of woods. 3 When you were younger, you begged for a brother, or even a sister. 4 What should you say to an orphan? You think of your mother’s habitual prelude to sympathy: “There’s nothing easier than burying other people’s children, but …” The orphans are beyond sympathy. 5 Sympathy being one of the problems. How far does it go? Not quite to the horizon. Not even to the trees beyond the pond. 6 The orphans, their still-breathing, lye- and cabbage-smelling bodies, are also a problem. 7 Father Whiskey with his lazy eye thinks a good Catholic family with only one child is both problem and solution. 8 One eye looks at your mother. The other looks at God looking at you. 9 Sympathy requires action, or at least words; empathy is a private affair, which is nevertheless a basis for community. However the distinctions are imprecise and need further work. 10 Father Whiskey sees God looking at you as if —if you believed in the Creed, the Holy Ghost, and all that he has tried to tell you, if you could even look a statue of Mary in the eye— then you could reach out a hand, lay it on this boy’s scrubbed forehead, make him your brother. 11 Later, in college, in a winter of mind and place, you will read Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy. Now though she is of no help to you. 12 You stand on the front porch and wait for the miracle to begin in your shoulder and travel down through your fingertips, the way you’ve heard lightning tries to escape the body. 13 In a few months there will be different orphans. Then the time comes but no orphans. 14 Years later, in a city where you can’t speak the language, you will pass a woman sitting on the pavement, a burnt-out shell of a woman holding an infant. The infant is sleeping, on his head a robin’s-egg-blue bonnet, spotless. 15 Your problem is you feel too much, or not at all. 16 Their grown bodies move past you. —from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith
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Rita Mae Reese: “Once on a road trip to Atlanta, Georgia, I came across a copy of The Habit of Being, the collected letters of Flannery O’Connor. Then, I had no faith to speak of, not even in myself. In one of the letters, O’Connor wrote to a friend: ‘If I live long enough and develop as an artist to the proper extent, I would like to write a comic novel about a woman—and what could be more comical or more terrible than an angular intellectual proud woman approaching God inch by inch grinding her teeth?’ I return to O’Connor’s stories and letters again and again, each time recognizing more of my comical, terrible self and—more surprisingly—the seeds of faith.” (web)
Related* “How Many?” by Rita Mae Reese * “Nathan Cirillo” by Sneha Madhavan-Reese * “To Thousand Island” by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
Aaron Poochigian
UNROMANTIC
In a torn hoodie, out of spite, a beggar is alive tonight beneath great failure and a gruff snowstorm. He can’t get small enough. Look how that innocence of his diminishes, diminishes as no hand ever offers up even a quarter for his cup. It’s hard to grin and keep the faith when threads from Goodwill on West 8th can’t keep the bitter from the bone. None of us should be that alone. I know his story: from the prairie. He lives on eleemosynary pittances but won’t go back, since, out of spite, in spite of hack, spit, shivers and a telltale fever, he is the truest true believer that ever took a Greyhound bus to Penn Station to be with us. I, who have starved, like him, in hope, have nothing much to help him cope with hunger, unsuccess, hard times: just poetry and a couple dimes.—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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Aaron Poochigian: “Auden said, ‘Poetry makes nothing happen.’ I don’t agree with him but, more and more, I find myself wanting to, more immediately, make the world a better place. That is: I have poetry but it is not enough. All I can afford to do right now is foster kittens.” (web)
Related* “Strawberry Fields” by Aaron Poochigian * “Centralia, PA” by Aaron Poochigian * “The Countdown” by Aaron Poochigian
CooXooEii Black
MY UNCLE ASKED
can you write about me? tell your readers i was the last ndn to stand on that rock before they blasted crazy horse’s face into its cracks and flat slopes. my war scars wrap my ribs all the way to my back, up my shoulder. tell them i never ran when dudes acted tough. write about the time i smacked my head on the backboard during high school. all my fans said i leaped so high, higher than any ndn before. it’s funny, spam was the only thing in my diet. i flew through the air like a bat, i was athletic. strong man. trust me i was strong. no workout plan, just big weight.under all this fat is the strength. i only ride bareback. let your readers know. i don’t like how the straps wear a horse’s fur. mention my solo memorial ride over togwotee pass. tell them i’m a man of faith. it was the pastor’s altar call when Jesus entered my life. i was bad growing up. now i laya different kind of hand. never one to masquerade. i know all the traditional dances and songs. i know this ain’t a test but will my story pass? is it strong or will it collapse?—from The Morning You Saw a Train of Stars Streaking Across the Sky
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CooXooEii Black: “I’ve always been interested in emotionally compelling stories, whether it was music, movies, or tv. I constantly got into trouble in elementary school for telling stories, singing songs, and acting. Then in high school, I watched a spoken word video, and for the first time, I found a medium that incorporated everything I love to do. So I put a few images down on a page, and I haven’t stopped since. Because it was God who gave me the ability to write, I daily return it to Him as a form of worship.” (web)
Related* “One of the Good Ones” by Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson * “Cracks” by Todd Davis * “On Broadway” by David Romtvedt
January Gill O’Neil
“WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT”
And when Tina sings I’ve been taking on a new direction directly to camera,defiant, her lips glazed a tumultuous red,she takes her hand and adjusts her honey brown bangs out of her eyesthen continues singing about her ownprotection. That MTV moment—Tina in a denim jacket and leather skirt,her million-dollar legs in black-seamed hose wearing fuck-Ike-this-is-my-video heels, a long way from “Nutbush City Blues”—indelible on my 15-year-old psyche when I had no idea what love had to do with anything—but I understood it was work, even painful, watching my parents argue and stay together, years later arguing with my ex and not staying together. It’s only now into my half-life I can speak of that sweeping gesture, how the imperfectness of the moment stayed with me all these years, not as a gaffe or faux pas for the cutting room floor, but from a woman in full command of her power, flaws and all, Tina’s hand gliding like the phases of the moon, that love could be second hand, given to pleasure, the rough music that remains after the light passes through us because who needs a heart when a heart can be broken. —from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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January Gill O’Neil: “Memory is amazing. With all the infinite moments we are continuously making and shedding, this frame of Tina Turner flicking her hair away in the video has stayed with me. It’s a mere second where we see her grit and self-reliance. Honestly, I don’t know where ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ came from, but I am thrilled I was here to greet it when it arrived.” (web)
Related* “Sunday” by January Gill O’Neil * “Two Small Fish” by Celeste Lipkes * “Rrose Sélavy No Longer Sings ‘La Vie en Rose’” by Grace Bauer
Conrad Geller
THE COYOTE IN THE GRAVEYARD
I know you, those eyes, that furtive skulk.I know why you have come, partly to mockThe mourners with their stones, partly to seeA curious ceremony. You are small,Obviously starving. Your coat is bad.You have no reason for that arroganceBecause, in spite of fortune, we are the living,We have come here of our own accord.But in the silence after everyone is goneI know you, loping in and outWith your inventory nose, making acquaintanceWith new members, comforting the old,Holding your own service, noting the innocenceWith which the other mourners said their prayers.—from Rattle #17, Summer 2002
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Conrad Geller: “For more than 50 years poetry has both sharpened and validated even my most ordinary experiences. Its forms make at least a little sense out of otherwise chaotic experiences. Its forms make at least a little sense out of an otherwise chaotic universe, and its music has always invited me to sing along.”
Related* “Elemental Intelligence” by Conrad Geller * “The Destination” by Conrad Geller * “And Have I Loved You?” by Conrad Geller
Katy Luxem
WAYS TO BREAK MY HEART
The first day of school, the smallclean shoes. A trail of glitter from the newbackpack. The pieces of us we cannot holdonto. My mother texts, rememberwhen you were this age? Waist-high,wide-eyed. Look at them go, and now my lastbaby is a kindergarten name tag. Do not miss me, I am with you. Somewhere in a long, polished hallstop and think of me. As the years go onand on. Open your lunchbox, I have made youa tuna sandwich, the way you like. The crusts cut off. —from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
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Katy Luxem: “I often come back to something Dorianne Laux said. ‘Good writing works from a simple premise: Your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.’ I frequently write about motherhood because it is deeply personal and yet also innately shared. My last child started kindergarten during the pandemic, and I thought about how my feelings were likely the same as parents everywhere, in some sense. We are always letting go. But in the little details, we get to stay.” (web)
Related* “At the Office Holiday Party” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz * “Transplant” by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco * “A Guide for Black and White Crossing” by Katy Richey
Dick Westheimer
THE NEARLY NEW MOON AND THE CRESCENT EARTH
I ask Google if gravity is a particle or a wave.Instead of responding, it shows me a photoof the crescent Earth seen from beyond the Moon,then asks me if I am happy, if I am more Moonthan Earth. And I think “Moon.” DefinitelyI am Moon today, a quarter million miles fromany of my brood, which is not much fartherthan I normally feel from here in Ohio, and themliving in warm homes, one with a cat sleepingat his feet, another snugged under blanketswith her lover watching the snow fall out theirfrosted window, a third tucking her loose-toothboy in bed before catching up on her work. Theirmother is paying bills in the other room andI am drawn to all of them, like the Moon isto the Earth—so far away, each of us, onefrom the other. But our orbits remain stableand Google was right. We are drawnby neither particle nor wave but by somestrong force not subject to the laws of physics.This is what I imagine the Moon feels, looking backat the blue jewel it was born from. And Earthtoo, is constantly tugged by the orb in its orbitas each is held so warmly by the other.—from Poets Respond
December 11, 2022
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Dick Westheimer: “I have gone back to look at this image over and over. The perspective here sent me wondering about gravity and the relationships I have with those in my orbit near and far.” (web)
Related* “Into the Metaverse” by Dick Westheimer * “The Miracle of Naming” by Dick Westheimer * “An American Jew Fails to Make Sense of the Carnage in Gaza” by Dick Westheimer
Chris Bullard
BACK STORY
The mate in spandex straps us, front and back,to flapping canvas sail and walks us backwardsto the speedboat’s slippery stern, backto where the blue-green sea roils in the backwash.You shout, “This is great,” but I shout back,“Let’s ask the captain for our money back.”And then a windstorm lifts us. Looking back,I see us rising, slipping off the backfrom safety into sky. The one way backis down. I yell, “Too high!” and pull you backthough you’re not scared—not here, or backat home, where I press, sleeping, to your back,afraid to lose you, who holds nothing back.—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
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Chris Bullard: “I wrote this sonnet in Kim Addonizio’s workshop at the West Chester University Poetry Conference. Kim wanted us to invent a new poetic form. I was interested in the ghazal with its repetitive use of the same word in different contexts. I found, as I worked on this poem, that I could create a similar effect within the sonnet form. Call it a sonzal. Kim offered some suggestions on my first draft that I incorporated into this version.”
Related* “How We Knew Them” by Chris Bullard * “Inventing the Dolphin” by Chris Green * “Dinner” by Pablo Garcia Casado
Georg Trakl
ST. PETER’S CEMETERY
Ringed all around is stony silence.The pallid flowers of death shiverOn the graves, which grieve in the dark—Although their grief contains no grief.The heavens smile quietly downUpon this dream-enclosed gardenWhich silent pilgrims tend.A cross guards every grave.The church rises like a prayerBefore a sign of grace eternal.Some light shines under the archesWhich silently prays for sorry souls—While trees blossom in the nightThat death might hide his faceIn the full shimmer of the beautiful,To make the dead dream deeper still.
Translated from the German by William Virgil Davis
—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
Tribute to Translation
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Georg Trakl (1887–1914) was an Austrian poet and the brother of the pianist Grete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. He is perhaps best known for his poem ‘Grodek,’ which he wrote shortly before he died. | William Virgil Davis: “I was drawn to Trakl very early on, in my teens, and have been translating him in my own slow way ever since. Years ago, quite by accident, I stumbled on his birthplace in Salzburg, not far from the cemetery which is the setting of this poem—a magical place, as are so many of his poems.”
Related* “Sunday, August 31, 2003” by Dallas Weibe * “The Fire” by Campbell McGrath * “What the Greeks Started” by Margaret A. Turner
Beverly Jackson
FEEDING FRENZY
for Diana
I have forced you to eat the fruit,you have forced me to grow it.What a pair we are, the growers& eaters. Yet while I gobbled art,theater, & hopeless men, you grew son,daughter & widowhood. I spread outplates of green, seedless grapes,your eyes swallow them whole.You may yearn for purple Concord, orItalian wine, but you eat nonetheless.When we are old, careless,without men, we shall sit in hammocks& eat from our laps. Dressed in floweredcotton & battered hats, we shall laugh,grow fresh salad in the yard & eat.Cats will narrow their eyes at us.We will stare back like neutered queens,lording it, eating earth, sky & wild romaine.—from Rattle #9, Summer 1998
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Beverly Jackson: “I was a serious dramatic actress, understudying Bancroff at every opportunity. When I moved to California, I went through another artistic contortion and began the study of painting. I did abstracts in mixed media and acrylic for 10 years before going home again to the thing I love most, writing.”
Related* “Mother” by Beverly Jackson * “Parting Ritual” by Soonest Nathaniel * “The Book of Fly” by John Philip Johnson
Jessica Lee
WHAT THE HEART DOES
If I told you a child taped two Band-Aids across her heart and one Band-Aid across her cheek,you might not believe me, as I did not believe my friend, a preschool teacher, who described how Aila went on to pour glue into her hands and rubbed the Elmer’s between her palms, creating a potion to make no one you love leave you everwhile her classmates built towers with yellow blocksin a separate corner of the room, towers they knocked down moments later, laughing at their own power to make and destroy as Aila continued staring into her small hands, the glue hardening in the palm lines that mighttell her future, this girl who already knew more than we knew about suffering,or maybe she just knew how to solve her heartache more practically than we ever tried to—after all, Elmer’s is fast-drying, multi-purpose—and my friend told me all of this over coffee, her eyes as glazed as the china we were drinking from because she was being left, too, by the man she thought would be the father of her future children, a man who didn’t want to have children after all,and when she finished explaining how Aila used the entire bottle of glue we sat in silence as our coffee went cold, wishing what we loved could stick or else for heartbreak to be quicker, rather than the trap door it is, the door we fall throughthat returns us to our knees, on the floor of our very first loss, where my friend is now, remembering when she was four, the same age as Aila, and how her father was always leaving the room for the Crystal Geyser bottle filled with vodka— and I want to tell her this is why I don’t want children, because there’s no way to escape makingtheir first imprints for loss, like boot prints through snow, even if the action is out of our control, as when my mother, pregnant, was wheeled into the elevator at Mercy General when I was seven and knew without knowing I might not see her again after the gray doors closed and she went up, up to the cold table where she was sliced open under the operating lights while I watched Bambion my great aunt’s waterbed, miles away, and though my mother lived, the blinds were drawnfor a full year and everything was dark—but you can’t tell a woman who is grieving the loss of a loverand the children she imagined they’d have all your own reasons to not have children, so I just held my friend’s handand later we walked together through the woodswhere we found deer hoof prints in dirtand noticed how each impression split at the center.—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
__________
Jessica Lee: “‘What the Heart Does’ is indebted to my friend’s student, who really did tape Band-Aids across her heart and cheek, rub glue between her hands, and declare she was making a potion ‘to make no one you love leave you ever.’ For privacy, I decided to give the girl the pseudonym, Aila—the name I hoped to give my own daughter.” (web)
Related* “Greener Pastures” by Jessica Lee * “Moments of Silence” by Joanna Lee * “Primer” by Jessica Jacobs
Francesca Bell
SMALL PARTS
After the plumbers leave, having installed new toilets because the old ones failed to whisk fully away what our bodies discarded, and we are of an age where we crave the satisfaction of good and final riddance,of never seeing again what we have chosen to set down, the ultimate, sweet pleasure of divestment, and after they have accidentally allowed my old beagle to escape, and I walk up and down the streets calling and whistling and return to find her waiting at the front door, triumphant, a long-dead bird’s leg bones gripped in her mouth, talons still attached, I read in the paper that a foot was found on a beach in Richmond, still laced into its Saucony shoe, and the article asks breezily for the public’s assistance, as if someone has unwittingly lost a right foot, size 6 or 7, perhaps while out running, before going on to clarify that every couple of months, small parts of people wash up on Bay Area beaches, mostly fingers or feet broken loose at the water’s slow insistence from the bodies of suicides who’ve tossed themselves whole from one bridge or another, dropping as that bird must have, finished finally with the entire enterprise, believing the Bay to be as powerful as a new toilet, able to afford a person the simple luxury of washing away the whole stinking, burdensome mess, but something keeps keeping us, a scavenging dog, a tide, a faulty toilet, even the Bay unable to stop our little bits, our wasted, torn-apart pieces from clinging to shore in refusal. —from Poets Respond
December 6, 2022
__________
Francesca Bell: “The day I read about the running shoe that washed up on a Richmond beach still holding its foot, I really was having my toilets replaced, and my beagle really did escape out the propped-open front door, and she really was waiting for me, after my fruitless search for her, carrying someone else’s leg bones in her mouth. All of it got me thinking about how difficult it is to ever be completely finished with or free of anything. We humans cling to pretty much everything, it’s true, but this world is sticky in its own way and seems also to not want to let us go.” (web)
Related* “Love in the Time of COVID-19” by Francesca Bell * “Late Mammogram” by Francesca Bell * “Heart in a Box” by Francesca Bell
Dag T. Straumsvåg
RESURGAM IN THE DELTA PAVONIS SYSTEM
Most inventions are inspired by things in nature. Think of the wheel. Or the computer. The computer is not unlike the human brain, complex and frail, a bearer of bad tidings: “A fatal error has been detected in Station C.” Station C is the base-camp for a group of archaeologists. For three years they have been looking for signs of intelligent life in the Mantell Sector, North Nekhebet, Resurgam in the Delta Pavonis System. A cold and relentless wind blows across the dry plains. The only things the three-day hurricane didn’t destroy were an iron shovel and the ship’s log. I’koor, the last survivor from Station C, writes: “This expedition has been a failure from day one. There wasn’t any sign of intelligent life out here until we arrived, and now I’m going to hit myself over the head with this shovel.”
Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hedin and the author
—from Rattle #77, Fall 2022
Tribute to Translation
__________
Dag T. Straumsvåg was born in 1964 in Kristiansund, a city on the sparsely populated coastline of western Norway and raised in the nearby village of Tingvoll. He is the author and translator of seven books of poetry, and his work has appeared in a wide range of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States. | Robert Hedin: “I have been translating the prose poems of Dag T. Straumsvåg for more than twenty years. What attracted me to his poems in the first place was their quirky, quixotic nature. As seen in ‘Resurgam in the Delta Pavonis System,’ his work is lively, idiosyncratic, and, above all, endlessly inventive—brief, jazz-like riffs that often voyage off the map into worlds where nothing is as it seems. The result is work that is filled with the playful joys of discovery, of the imagination, the immemorial spirit of the creative journey itself.” (web)
Related* “The Mozart Effect” by T.J. McGuire * “Delta” by Arthur Bull * “Delta Flight 1152” by Andrea Hollander
Andrew Posner
BLANK
Blank sheets of white paper were a symbol of defiance over the weekend as Chinese protesters braved likely prosecution to openly oppose the government’s policy of zero tolerance for COVID and public dissent.
—Newsweek
I stare blankly at the page, wanting to fillit with meaning. In Xinjiang, 7,000 milesaway, a morning sun, reflecting off theglasses of early risers, the windshieldsof commuters, is so bright as to redactlast night’s graffiti: Down with Xi. Thepeople, smiling the wry smile of thelong-aggrieved, hold up blank pagesand say nothing, while everywhere censors,police, apparatchiks, always listening, watching, fill page after page with names, addresses, offenses: Zhāng Wěi disrespected the Party, Lǐ Nà seeks tosabotage the social order. In Los Angeles, I ambusy besmirching the page, smearing it with inkas though covering the purest snow in de-icing salt.The snow melts down to mud. Poetry reduces toa mush of guttural sounds, incomprehensibleto the moment. Heaving a sigh, I make a doubleespresso, add a splash of cream and sugar, savoreach peaceful sip. Outside, a hawk, saying nothing,carries off a rabbit in its talons. Is this the naturalorder of things? For once I hear the tearing of flesh,see the sky turn blood-red. No one will apprehend mehere, cup in hand, crumpled paper on the floor, blankvisage belying the seeds of treason. But were they to try,which treason would I admit? And which would I deny?—from Poets Respond
December 4, 2022
__________
Andrew Posner: “I’m watching the ‘Blank-Paper Protests’ in China from the comfort of my home, wondering how I would react were I living under such an authoritarian regime. Then again, the authoritarian streak in America is ever-looming; so perhaps the question of my response to such circumstances is not so moot.” (web)
Related* “This Is Not a Protest” by Elya Braden * “Blank Verse for a Blank Earth” by Rimas Uzgiris * “Ice Hole” by Danny Mask
The deer this time of year are gray. I see themnear the railroad tracks. What I like about themis how they flee at the first sign they are observed. Continue reading →
All summer, garden snakes slithered in and out of her grief. Now she has Canada geese to count, as they angle south for the season. Continue reading →
I look to poetry to wake me up from the stupor of statistics; to help me reconnect, through empathy and close attention, with the singularity of each life—and with all life on this imperiled planet. Continue reading →
Everything comes back to haunt us one day the boy you beat up a long time ago stands before you in the street car Continue reading →
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The girl has been missing five days. Also her boyfriend. She’s fifteen, red blonde hair, friend of my daughter. Continue reading →
I’ll have a burrito bowl. White rice. Black beans. Fajita veggies. Double protein. Double back. Half-scoop of pico. Continue reading →
For me, the writing of poems requires an equal measure of trust and luck. I write to see what will happen. Some days are better than others. It’s like fishing. The first line is the reluctant worm. I have a cooler full of worms. A head full of fish. Continue reading →
In that dark, the light
strike startled my mirror.
I saw nudity—by accident—
& did not understand myself
without fabric. Continue reading →
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In grade school a girl who could draw guided my hand while I tried for a horse that resembled a horse. Continue reading →
After a veil of rain, butterflies rise from the ground. She runs with my blow n kiss, but its moi sture in the air drifts a part. Continue reading →
More of us than ever before walk the Earth at once. All over the globe more men and women fall in and out of love,
and open windows frame more rain-facing faces than ever before in the history of storms. Continue reading →
Running the unforgiving woods and puddles at Stillwater. I peer up through bare branches glimpsing the sky so maybe the miles will feel shorter cold water shocks me Continue reading →
A child is born. It’s you! Family and friends stop by and then the whole neighborhood, it seems, including three women who sit in the corner and smile and nod at anyone who says hello, though mainly they keep to themselves … Continue reading →
Gregory had a mole below his left eye and sometimes kids in our 5th grade class would tease him, saying he had chocolate on his face. Continue reading →
Alireza Roshan was born in Tehran and now lives in Hamburg, Germany. The author of 10 books of poetry and fiction, he made his literary debut in 2011, posting one brief poem a day on the internet. Continue reading →
Mother, for once, it wasn’t your fault. You always said you can’t soak hams long enough and one full day and night seemed adequate, but we gave it two, scrubbed mold, rind, salt away, changed the water, tucked it like a baby in its bath; another day, rinsed, patted dry, made ready. Continue reading →
There is no harm, in times of darkness, to use god. Light, love, is seized time and again, else we lose god. Continue reading →
Aaron Carter, I don’t know where they will hold your funeral but tonight I am wearing black wandering Greenwich Village wanting to hear “I Want Candy” behind the ambient curtains of jazz. Continue reading →
This summer we try out manhood like chlorophyll, a veneer on the fields. Would you kiss him if he asked, would you hold hands if you wanted to, warm them as we wander the streets of Pompeii? Continue reading →
May Heaven’s brimstone rain down, reprobate, upon your hair since sin is such a thrill— you who ate acorns, drank the river’s swill, then robbed the poor to be both rich and great! Continue reading →
Don’t bother yourselves. Really. We’re not “clinging,” as you put it with your gentle scorn for the inept— “clinging to life” like a minnow too dumb to expire when a rain pool dries up. Continue reading →
Many people call these the dog days. In North Carolina we have our own names for the seasons and we call this one Hell’s Front Porch. Continue reading →
i came across a garden one day, guarded by a gate of glass at the top of the stairs. Continue reading →
I was 19 when I first started to look like my mother; cupid’s bow forming flat above my lip and tear filled eyes going over and over pages of numbers, looking for new ways to crunch. Continue reading →
She told me that she loved me. I was only 8 years old. She spoke of getting married After we were grown. Continue reading →
This morning’s stories include a bald eagle about to board a Southwest plane, his handler
taking him through the TSA checkpoint in North Carolina, him flexing his wings, as if to say Continue reading →
Image: “Blueprint of a Dream” by Jaundré van Breda. “Driving in the Rain” was written by Christopher Shipman for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2022, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. Continue reading →
Because I feel naked during these conversations, I start small with the lights turned off. Tell him I like my hair pulled. He nods. Tell him I like dirty talk Continue reading →
thank you The President for canceling my debt. I will use this reprieve from hopelessness to write one poem, early in which the speaker will discover an absence of hopelessness is not exactly hope, more like emerging from too-warm water into the wet air Continue reading →
When you chased me down back alleyways under the supervision of the moon, we woke up on peppermint flower beds, after a night of making wishes to the Elysian moon. Continue reading →
Bipolar disorder (Noun) A psychiatric disorder marked by alternating episodes of mania and depression. That is a fact. Here is my slice of that storm. Continue reading →
Image: “Blueprint of a Dream” by Jaundré van Breda. “Balancing Act” was written by Ajay Kumar for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. Continue reading →
You think you can’t write about a mud puddle? YOU CAN WRITE ABOUT A MUD PUDDLE. Whattaya think you can’t write about that puddle for? Huh? Continue reading →
as you read this poem. At the end you will be given a productivity score, the measure of how deeply you engaged with the content. Did your gaze rest on the clever line breaks? Continue reading →
Growing up in my day (gosh, I sound old), everybody wanted to be a rapper. Everybody wanted to battle. Everybody wanted to blow up. Everybody was going for everybody. And then it died out. We died out. I have to bury myself within these pages just to feel alive, and in the process … Continue reading →
Hair keeps you warm in the winter and gives you something to do with your fingers when you are bored. Continue reading →
I like to create things. Poetry is one way to do so, using words to create feelings. Continue reading →
I don’t know when the bridge was built, or when the trains stopped running, or which side of the tracks was ours & which theirs, or why they painted the bridge turquoise Continue reading →
The main thing is to have this poem be proud of me, to have this poem feel as if she did the best she could. Continue reading →
I watched in confused amazement as the inmate carefully slipped a sock over his phone like a giant cotton condom before placing the bone phone up to his ear. Continue reading →
an afterthought, meat gone rancid, Anna Karenina in blue hose, ephemerata. Continue reading →
We decided not to think about being as old as we were, fearing we’d soon feel feeble, far removed from our youthful vision of ourselves as old ladies in flowered dresses on the veranda, drinking afternoon tea Continue reading →
I have spent nearly a month in Bombay with a copy of Midnight’s Children on my bookstack, taunting me. Each time I think let me open the first page, each time I remember another place I have to be. Continue reading →
There’s not a bad poet in first grade. None of them are anything but fresh and original … they don’t know how to avoid being original. —Sharon Olds, from Rattle #17 Continue reading →
1999—Prince sang about it. Media over-conflated it, remember? Y2K—computers worldwide would crash. Continue reading →
Sometimes you can be so happy and it’s inexplicable, driving your car down the freeway or sitting in your kitchen eating an apple Continue reading →
What’s new? Dr. M asks like we talk all the time— then Scoot down a bit, and I do, tensing. Continue reading →
Once, I told my son, you pay for credits in college, but you must learn on your own. Continue reading →
Step 310
Trial. Physically present, mentally absent.
I.
Don’t.
Care. Continue reading →
We give hummingbirds sugar water in defiance of dentists' recommendations everywhere, and in return for our sweetness, have been gifted a nest Continue reading →
There is a beehive rotting somewhere under the Colosseum. Resident hornets come out sometimes in the summer, and they are furious and they are starving. Continue reading →
Her larynx is raw from chanting. Every diphthong, and syllable aflame. Each vowel broken. Continue reading →
The winos rise as beautiful as deer. Look how they stagger from their sleep as if the morning were a river against which they contend. Continue reading →
Hey there, Miss Miranda I don’t know how lucky I feel, For without a heart to guide me I don’t know what feelings are real. Continue reading →
For three days, Friday Plus the weekend, I pulled up roots. I wandered Freely among women in velvet dresses, Men in cutaways. Continue reading →
It was Sesame Street, Ernie particularly, who taught me how to covet the company of a floating vessel– Continue reading →
What will be left of this drowned town when the rain stops and the river lays low? Continue reading →
She rises in the predawn darkness, the way he rose to tend his farm on Inishmore those years ago. Continue reading →
To change the way I felt, I burnt myself today. Fire cleanses, doesn’t it? Arson led me astray. Continue reading →
Image: “Kennedy Lake” by M-A Murphy. “Poem with a Cloud and Frank Ocean Lyrics” was written by Jose Felipe Ozuna for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2022, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. Continue reading →
Most days, online dating feels like another kid’s birthday party—like getting lost at Fun World, waiting to cash in our cupful of hard-won tickets only to learn we’re six hundred short of anything with batteries included. Continue reading →
Some men live for others and make their presence known. Some men live in isolation and choose to live alone. Continue reading →
When some Americans hear about a man-made calamity unfolding in Britain, it takes a hot minute to remember there is no such thing as a country that is simultaneously one sovereign nation and your sophic mother ... Continue reading →
Years ago, I was driving home with my five-year-old son, and about halfway there (we lived 13 miles out of town), I saw a harvest moon, and said, Django, did you know that Caesar saw that moon? Continue reading →
Image: “Kennedy Lake” by M-A Murphy. “June 24, 2022” was written by Sarah Russell for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. Continue reading →
Keith Pertusio PRATIKRIYASANA (Counter pose) My heart leaps at the rap on the window. A CO. A flashlight. I am lying on the floor on my back, eyes closed, a twisting counterpose. I jump up. “Just making … Continue reading →
My morning newsfeed teems with shots of space— bright slopes and swirls of russet and vermilion that shelter hidden planets by the billion. Soon, soon my puny brain will try to face Continue reading →
The article in Happy was: “Feast your eyes on the world’s top 8 sexiest plants.” More words to form the headline than plants listed. Continue reading →
Bayleigh Cardinal AMERICA, I WANT to tell you a secret as the sun buries itself in our backs, us sitting like driftwood at the horizon of a lake we don’t know the name of. I want to say … Continue reading →
When she entered a room, the room paid attention. When she entered his house, the leather couches plumped up and shone Continue reading →
The restroom in my workplace is like women’s rooms everywhere. The floor is thumbprint-sized tiles in three distinct shades of gray arranged in no discernable pattern. Continue reading →
I think about how you stayed up nights, Mother, drinking coffee at your sewing machine. The time you never went to bed finishing my Isadora Duncan costume— Continue reading →
Image: “El Camino de Esmeralda” by Danelle Rivas. “Camouflage” was written by Katie Kemple for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG) __________ Katie Kemple CAMOUFLAGE The images couldn’t tell if they started … Continue reading →
They banned bubblegum to keep our streets clean, to save our sidewalks from the sticky sweetness brewed in our restlessness Continue reading →
Sometimes Mom would say to you Why don’t you two drive into town and get a milkshake, get a Coke. Continue reading →
Wisdom sits down to dinner disguised As a guest covered with small birds. The birds are trying to fly but are stuck In the fabric of the visitor’s adornment. Continue reading →
the cops walk free while walls hold precedence
over an innocent black woman’s life. Continue reading →
Frank Lloyd Wright was a terrible father, But I like his houses and windows. His horizontal lines, I want to be those dark beams. Continue reading →
"So, Allen calls me up (Allen Ginsberg that is—good friend of mine, great poet) and he says, ‘Michael, what you need is to get out into nature …" Continue reading →
Walter the clerk asks How’re you doing? & I say Peachy & he says You don’t look fuzzy and I say I feel fuzzy which explains all the Theraflu and DayQuil in my basket. Continue reading →
The dead doe on the Pacific Coast Highway was lying on her left side. She was almost the same color as the dirt around her. Continue reading →
while you’re visiting your father, and I know it’s you because it’s your ringtone, the notes in a tune you chose, so it would be bright and I would know it was you Continue reading →
KHDM TRANSITORY When it rains for days the value of water plummets, and it can rain anything— slices of American cheese sail down from the sky. The supermarkets black out their windows and the mice take an early retirement from … Continue reading →
The Great Salt Lake was not as beautiful as I expected.
The drive through the desert, the white-edged saline crust, the scrubby in-way speckled with wildlife warnings. Continue reading →
There was a time the smiling lady saw the world unguarded—nothing between her eyes and the eyes of her admirers. Continue reading →
A blank sheet of paper falls out of a stack of printing paper. Its lack of use at the moment stares at her. She shuffles it back where it belongs. It begs for a poem. Continue reading →
America, I don’t know where to start now. Blood-soaked backpacks: the most callous part now. Continue reading →
They were dancing on the roof of the house next door, flames leaping from the windows,
in the calm metronome of a danzón … Continue reading →
Sipped from his flask crossing the shoals and my girlfriend drove him to campus. She was always involved with
something and I was involved with her … Continue reading →
If you wish to be wealthy, duck beneath the topcoat of a well-dressed river until you come up with a mossy boot filled with shiners. Spend them wisely. Continue reading →
My father has taken to dosing my mother with melatonin at night. Or she would rise at 3 to watch TV and later, after dinner, not know him.
My mother stands pointing at all the flowers gone to the deer; Continue reading →
After you leave the banks where moist sod yields beneath your feet, you labor up a steep hill and reach a garden called “Strawberry Fields.” Continue reading →
A young man wakes in a burning house. Tears throttle his eyes, he cannot draw breath, everything is smoke, darkness, and fire. He tumbles from bed and crawls the long hallway toward the door; the door is locked, he has no key. Continue reading →
Last night, I told my son that if he sees a shooter coming, he needs to hide in a file cabinet or underneath a covered table. Continue reading →
I would have loved Eric Garner! Is this wrong to say?
Taken the weight of him in— Continue reading →
On the radio I hear goldfish are out and about to take over waterways they’ve been making hay in stormwater ponds gone thick with themselves Continue reading →
hyacinth was the first gay man so he was the first gay martyr, of course. Continue reading →
The sounds grow; they are the teeth of a vehemently rotating circular saw. Continue reading →
You thought she was your friend and then you saw her s. Her lower case i, with the circle, the actual circle instead of a dot. Continue reading →
it’s not ohvulation it’s awvulation. I am a young woman in America. this is my neon youth. Continue reading →
Susan Vespoli
TWENTY PHOTOS FROM POLICE RECORDS OF HIS LAST NIGHT ALIVE
*The criminalization of homelessness makes
the struggle to survive on the streets even
more difficult.
—National Coalition for the Homeless*
The sadness lands at night, a heavy bird standing above your ribs, the weight of its body dropping down through its legs and into your core making it hard to breathe. Sadness leans against the interior of a tunnel along an underpass you suddenly recognize as the I-17 at Thunderbird only a couple miles from your house: a black backpack with orange straps a knit blanket Big Gulp cups a cardboard box and a pink plastic crate, graffiti that has sprayed the cement into a cloud. Photos 15, 16, & 17 your son’s face, the 18th his back, head hung to chest in resignation, a hoodie, wrists clasped in handcuffs, his left palm and fingers circling his right thumb like his hands are comforting each other. Walk off the sadness. Spot a hawk perched on your rooftop AC unit, where a little bird dives and screams at the hawk who just sits there like patriarchy, like an American eagle, possibly the one on a dollar bill until it squawks once, then lifts into the air the small bird in its talons. —from Poets Respond
May 3, 2022
__________
Susan Vespoli: “This past week, I received photos and body-cam video from police records of my son Adam’s last night on the planet before he was shot by a police officer. Adam and three other homeless individuals, one in a wheelchair, one leaning on a cane, were charged with a misdemeanor for ‘obstructing streets or public areas.’ Because my son questioned the police’s right to arrest them for sleeping, he was thrown to the ground, charged with ‘resisting arrest’ and hauled into jail for the night. The next day, he was shot. I am writing to give a voice to all the human beings who sleep without homes and who are treated this way.” (web)
Related* “How to Celebrate Your Daughter’s 33rd Birthday When There’s No Going Back” by Susan Vespoli * “Late Mammogram” by Francesca Bell * “Potpourri” by Liz N. Clift
Christine Degenaars
SWIMMERS IN THE CARIBBEAN
after Susan Mitchell
At a Starbucks on Union Avenue, it rains and a stranger closes his eyes over me. I’d like to blame him for this, how much I am like a window now— it was a cab ride, those early years. We drove to Central Park, you pressed a piece of cloth to a cut on my heel, remember? Like oil, it shined in the car light. Come with me to Trinidad and Tobago you said. Your wife, your girls gone. Port of Spain, the air salted with spring—there you said the lime goes on forever. I saw us— beach hat and folding chairs, watch the ocean tag the shore, retreat. Ships in the bay bobbing like bucking horses, towels the color of sunset. You said at night we’d sit flushed with rum and cheap wine, side by side on the balcony, looking out—darkness like the hem of a sheer skirt. You in white linen and well into forty. My mother warned me: never love a man you can’t understand. Your teeth were a fence painted between your lips. I shouldn’t have believed you. Sometimes still, sometimes— love is a dark pool at the bottom of a dark well, or something else: refuse and rain water which take me back home. What I say, I say without mercy and what you said, listen to me— they were not songs. —from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
__________
Christine Degenaars: “Violist and composer Kurt Rohde once said to me that all language is metaphor. It looks to obtain a shared understanding, a meeting of internal worlds, but it never quite gets there. To me, poetry is the closest we can get to crossing the divide between symbol and actual. In some ways, I write because I can’t not write and because bridging this gap—understanding and being understood—seems to me like the most important work we can do.” (web)
Related* “The Uncertaintest Word” by Christine Poreba * “Receptionist (1972)” by Christine Potter * “Basho’s Hut: A Haibun” by Kenny Tanemura
Sarah Etlinger
LOVE IS AN INTRANSITIVE VERB
Martin says he’s been thinking about the flag and how he’s come to understand it is not just the empty symbol. What he loves about it, he says, is that it can represent all of us, what the promise of America could be— he wears it on his sleeve like the badge of the patron saint of lost causes. We all want to help one another. I’ve been thinking about him thinking about the flag. I’ve been thinking I want to be a person who loves the flag and loves thinking about America. I want to love so much of this misshapen and misbegotten abundance, the tattered bug-ridden underbelly: Rats in the subway. Garbage dumps and rivers swollen with bacteria. The plastic and refuse that washes up on beaches as dunnage, shell-hash. The bacteria that invaded my grandfather’s blood, turning it septic; my mother’s uterine metastasis, threatening my own genes like a covenant. I want to love the politicians, the people who want to vacuum carbon emissions out of the air. The billionaires and celebrities who jet off to space instead of solving world hunger or poverty. It is easy to love when everything is beautiful. I want to be a person who can love others without putting myself into it: the way the sun embraces the world and highlights its imperfections. Here’s a cracked abandoned cement wall. Here’s the withered ancient ivy snaking up its shabby back. Here’s where the thick vines ruin the view of the window, outline the jagged stained glass so you can’t see the world outside anymore. Here’s where ivy grew. —from Poets Respond
May 1, 2022
__________
Sarah Etlinger: “This poem originates from a conversation I had with a friend about the problematic assumptions about the American flag, and how it has become co-opted for certain movements or certain groups of people. When I thought about it, I was also thinking about the story I listened to on NPR about solutions to climate change; one of the many solutions proposed is to vacuum the carbon emissions from the air. The sheer ridiculousness (in my view) of this, and the capaciousness of my friend’s understanding of the promise of America, came together in a wistful onslaught of what I hope we can achieve.” (web)
Related* “Frozen America” by Zinnia Hansen * A Conversation with Ellen Bass * A Conversation with Li-Young Lee
Anne Haines
THE SWARM
*Numerous pilots have reported sightings
of burning debris in the skies over
the eastern U.S. …
—News report*
Night flight, routine over eastern cities, their grids of blue light. My radio crackles with its usual static, codes for altitude and safe landings. When the sudden streak flares in the corner of my eye I squint into nothing, say nothing. I’m no crazy. I’ve never reported UFOs or sightings of Jesus in the high patterns of clouds, never claimed to see ghosts no matter what strange small town I was in for the night. But there it is again, and another to the west, falling like a river of lava, molten stone or the last moments of some fierce angel, trailing his wings of disappearing light. I radio it in this time and head for home, instruments casting their electronic glow across my still face, the silent cabin. Later they tell me it was meteors; the Draconid swarm, they call them, a once-in- a-lifetime near-miss. They tell me I was not the only one. But I stare into darkness until darkness wins. I know demons when I see them, those failed angels trailing feathers as they blaze the last of their light. I know demons when I see them and I know when they are mine. —from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
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Anne Haines: “I live in a tiny house in Bloomington, Indiana with two cats, two guitars, and too many books for my own good. Because I work in an academic library, I am pretty much surrounded by books and the people who love them 24/7 (life is good). I have been writing ever since I was, as an acquaintance once put it, ‘knee-high to a toad-frog’—on my best days, I still love it just as much as I did then.”
Related* “What This Poem Will Do” by Anne Haines * “Divorce and Astronauts” by Jesse Valentine * “A Golden Retirement” by Lesley Jenike
Jackie McManus
DOCK GRADE ROAD
If it weren’t for an old feud between the town on the cliff and the town on the water racing to get their berry crops to market, this road would not have been built. And now one hundred and thirty-nine years later, the feud still alive, community elves have adorned this half-mile mountain road. Fishing line and zip ties hang ornaments like fruit from trees. I’m driving with my daughter. She could be one of these, a bulb buoyant with the pledge of spring or like that one on the shoulder, broken glass. When she was born we said Isn’t she perfect? then dissected her perfection. Aren’t her ears perfect? But today black plugs are punched into a bulbous hole in her lobes like the flat eyes of an abandoned doll. She sits on the brink of her seat as if about to flee, yearning to be beheld in her new dress. I am not so old that it’s forgotten: this ache to be acknowledged, witnessed, loved. It is an old feud stirring in my fifteen-year-old daughter in that new dress, high tops flashing like an alarm on the floorboard. I want to lock the new dress in the house but my hands are driving it to town where it will meet people. A large ornament, red, in the shape of a tear, clings to the cuff of an oak near my door. I could reach out and pluck it. Quick. Remind me of something good. How it is a feud that built a road we still drive, how daughters carry Ishmael in tie-dyed bags but also a rusty copper teapot and a flint, and how things don’t always make sense and sometimes that is the crumbled beauty of it. If only there were more light; if only there were more time. How long can a town hang on to a feud? I want the ornaments in her ears to stop their blind stare and her shoes to stop winking from hell. I want to break this enchantment but too many bulbs have dropped from these woods on this road, on this very road, dripping holy. There are vehicles in front of us, behind us. They, too, could be caught in the current of a child, one that keeps running away. Soon I will drop her off on one side of the feud, the side we live on. —from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
Tribute to Librarians
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Jackie McManus: “I was about to work as the director of a library in Wisconsin when I spoke with someone at the main office. ‘It must be so nice to work surrounded by books,’ I said. ‘What books?’ she countered. She was right. I did less reading as the director of a library than I ever have. Unless you count story-time for children (which was absolute fun). Still, it was one of the best jobs I look back on, and miss. If it inspired my writing in any way, it would have to do less with the employment than the place, which I write about often.” (web)
Related* “As Fire, My Father” by Michael P. McManus * “Recalculating” by C. Wade Bentley * “The Movie Star’s Secret” by William Walsh
Image: “Anonymous Was a Woman” by Natascha Graham. “Her Vanity” was written by Marc Alan Di Martino for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2022, and selected as the Assistant Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Marc Alan Di Martino
HER VANITY
My mother used to sit like this before her vanity, her shoulders bathed in blue and pink light, her powdered skin dredged in a cloud of talc, breathing it in. Oblivious at seventeen, she wanted more than anything to look her best when Eddie Fisher offered her a Coke in his posh Manhattan hotel suite. I sat with her in a room off Times Square years later, our last outing together before the nursing homes enchained her. She told me the story—as she said, for the umpteenth time—of how she’d met the singer whose career nosedived the day Elvis broke the charts with “Heartbreak Hotel.” They shared a Coke, the story went: his lips kissing the weightless ‘O’ of the glass bottle which was furtively snatched up from where he’d set it down, forgotten it, by her swift hand. Later, she told us about the talcosis, how it affected her breathing. For the rest of her life she saw a pulmonologist. I sat there letting her regale me with the tale of Eddie Fisher for the umpteenth time in a cheap hotel room off Times Square, a crooked mirror fixed above the sink a painting of a woman on the wall which might have been her, poised at her vanity, poisoning herself for love. —from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2022, Assistant Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the assistant editor, Megan Green: “When I read ‘Her Vanity’ and then look at ‘Anonymous Was a Woman,’ it’s so easy to see the poet’s mother, dreamlike in a ‘cloud of talc,’ disrobed and vulnerable but also vibrant and resilient. She seems, in both the painting and the poem, to be frozen in time, at once a youthful beauty and an older woman lost in memory. The poet’s choice of language is deceptively and skillfully effortless: ‘My mother used to sit like this/before her vanity,’ the poem begins, a line that appears simple yet contains layers of music and meaning. The vividness of the narrative and the unspoken questions about the value of beauty combine to create an extraordinary poem that reflects an extraordinary work of art.”
Related* “Upstate” by Marc Alan Di Martino * “They Tried to Cover Her Up” by Stephanie Shlachtman * “Angular Bones” by Jeanie Tomasko
Tara Bray
MEMOIR
Once my cousin made me watch a cow for hours. If we eat meat, he said, we’ll be that sluggish, dull. I ate no meat for years; it was too late for reason. My best friend loved a cow; she named it Gracie. The truck came, lured it to slaughter. She called and called. The cow would not turn back. She made of this her song. Once, we named her goat after a boy who shared its earnestness, the shape of its face. From time to time we say we should have married this goat-faced boy, married for kindness. We were girls with raven hair and secrets we gutted with kitchen tools. Peach faced, and open as a lake, we liked to trail the fenceline with no shoes, laughter so young, it cut through ruin, though I never knew my point, a girl starstruck on grackles, too soon tutored in the hex of bounty taken back. I rammed my girlmind underneath black wings flecked in bronze. Girls like hummingbirds I shunned, myself a squat chickadee. Those like sparrows, with their subtle shifts of distinction, drew me in. Hawks I kept my distance from. Devotion I learned from those who made demands, girls who bathed in milk and danger, edged their desire up against my throat. The repulsion I felt for the neighbor boy still lives. I see the spongy yellowed teeth, that odd toe so plump for a delicate child. He liked to beat the trees with belts. I followed, until my mother said no more. At a hayride we kids passed a flask of booze. I covered up with a boy I half knew, would not lock eyes with, but he was smooth moon and the rough mark of hay. Young mouths are stitched, or they bellow like a river. The past, a cow barreling for desire, goats bearing their own scent. Looking back, I love. Now we scrub ourselves, cover one smell with another. Failed children, we gather on a hilltop, answering the rain. —from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
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Tara Bray: “For the last two decades I’ve spent a lot of time writing poems inspired by my time in nature, yet for this poem I returned to my childhood as subject matter. I picked up some scraps of a poem written in my late twenties and early thirties, and expanded a bit, coloring the older work with some of what I’ve noticed in the meantime. The birds that I love to write about and have written so much about for years now still managed to make their way into the poem. I like that it contains snippets from various points in time and yet holds together somehow.”
Related* “The Cow I Didn’t Eat Today” by Lollie Butler * “Transfertle the Plum” by Carol Denson * “What It Means to Be Taken” by S.H. Lohmann
Olabimpe Adedamola
BACK TO THE BEGINNING WHICH IS TO SAY I AM AT THE END
let me take you to before the un-flowering. the dissolution & cracked skin. before heaven rejected my body & i let greatness fall out of my mouth in chunkfuls of liquid light. before the splitting open & roadkill dash & blasphemy kissed tongue. before, when i called myself a god & birthed scenarios into reality. when i could feel wings hesitating to spring from my back. that night we kissed after passing the bottle back and forth between us, i felt something disappear from me. i became ordinary, the mystery surrounding my shadow unspooling into long threads of sorrow & neglect. there is no magic here, just a child blossoming into an adult, falling back into a child’s blossoming again. —from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
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Olabimpe Adedamola: “I am a law student in Lagos, Nigeria. I found a huge poetry collection in the library of my secondary school and it felt like magic. And I wanted to create this kind of magic. To awe people. And so, I wrote.”
Related* “Nine” by Christine Butterworth-McDermott * “Slut” by Ukamaka Olisakwe * “This Living Hand” by David Kirby
Gus Peterson
“MATHURA MAN SETS RECORD BY STARING AT SUN FOR OVER AN HOUR”
Seventy and retired it comes to this— apertures white as snow, the comforting dark. Out of sight, out of mind. The tired engine’s bark and burp of black fireworks he saw explode once like a profusion of lotus across night. And this summer’s sun softened streets? Cool river mud between boyhood toes. He does this unblinking. Because it hurts, the light that bounces off this world. We squint and squint, trying to adjust, not so much to shut out as look past it. —from Poets Respond
March 29, 2022
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Gus Peterson: “I heard this story mentioned in passing on the radio driving into town today. Although a few months old, I had to see if it was true. I’m still not sure it is. But after such a long dark pandemic winter indoors in Maine my eyes still haven’t adjusted to the brilliance of even a partly sunny day. But I can understand the impulse to not want to see at times.”
Related* “Nautilus” by Gus Peterson * “Open Season” by Kate Peterson * “Unsent Letter from Philae, Comet 67P” by Rachel J. Bennett
Ann Giard-Chase
ENCEPHALON
I remember her smile—quick and fleeting on the day she arrived in the EEG Lab. She was tentative, curious, quizzical. What’s wrong with me? she asked. She knew the drill, understood I’d fasten electrodes like tiny ears to her scalp, connect a wiggle of wires to the EEG machine as she lay on the gurney and I began to calibrate, roll the paper across the console, wake the stainless steel pens. This was a long time ago. I was young; it was my first job and only a few years before the CAT scan and MRI began dragging the heavy iron lid off the human brain. For millenniums, the brain lay buried, hidden like an ornate jeweled sarcophagus until the bony inflexible bowl that holds the “crux of you” suddenly fell prey to the prying eyes of magnets, radio waves, and x-ray beams. But what did I know then of the brain and disease? And what did this young woman know of me? I was nameless to her, just another hospital tech conducting another test. Yet, fear staggered around in my gut; I was afraid of what the EEG might find in her cranium, the dark forest of a hundred billion cells, branches, and roots. They have their language, a chatter of whispers, hums, and roars. They send messages to each other that rise and fall in waves. I heard a faint click as the EEG began to transmit the brain’s voltage into a clatter of pens, scribbling the ancient dialect— alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves across the page. Down, over, and through the brain’s plump hemispheres, the fissures, the lobes, the wires and threads, the knots of neurons and convoluted folds the EEG went, winding its way through the rhythm and resonance, the oscillations and cacophony. The brain too has its instruments—an ensemble of percussion, strings, and brass. Every now and then, the keyboards chime in. But what lurked? What crouched in the dark? What shadow lay awake in some spiny crevice plotting against this young woman, the least of her dreams still wingless within her? I kept going, eager to complete the test, quell her fears, and have the neurologist scrawl “within normal limits” across the EEG report. I stared at the paper; her brain was spelled out before me like the score of a vast symphony, alpha and beta waves scurrying up-tempo, brisk and lively in the opening sonata as she lay awake. Soon, an adagio of delta waves came waltzing by, swirling like petticoats across the page as she drifted into a dreamless, drowsy haze. Next came the stately minuet of REM, her eyes dancing back and forth as she dreamed in three-quarter time. The test was nearly over. So far, so good. Everything looked normal. I could relax again. Suddenly! a stray beat, a wrong note, the strings were playing out of tune, the snares drumming in a waning staccato, tick … tick … tick … like the stroke of time winding down. When I saw it lurking in its deep trench, I knew it for what it was. The EEG pens vaulted out of control, surged into a rondo of spikes resembling tuning forks bolted upright. Tumor! Tumor! Tumor! screeched the EEG as the pens feverishly scribbled their ill-fated news across the page. No! No! No! I felt as if I were caught in an undertow— some dark wave pulling me under, some jaws clenching in the tide. I saw both of us teetering on a rock ledge and me reaching out with both arms trying desperately to pull her back. Too young, I was shouting to myself, the sound of my inner voice like the shriek of metal being sliced or the way thunder drags itself across a bruised sky, a vibration, a low frequency swell upon which I floated with fear and recognition. I never saw her again. Perhaps in time, a decision was made and she was wheeled down some long, sterile corridor into a miracle, and somewhere she combs her daughter’s hair, packs lunches, drops the kids off at school, drives to work. Or there is that tragic song that plays over and over again; you know what I mean. I thought of her often as I wound my way through my own years, how her life had brushed against mine, soft as a bassoon, teaching me life’s unending refrain, the rhythm of time that spirals on and on, and fate—the dark flame flowing past us like a river, heartless and infinite. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
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Ann Giard-Chase: “The title of this poem, ‘Encephalon,’ denotes the upper part of the central nervous system that resides inside the human skull. When I graduated from college years ago, I worked as a registered EEG (electroencephalography) technologist in the neurology department of a major hospital. Patients of all ages and disease states came and went, presenting with a variety of symptoms to be analyzed by attaching electrodes to the patient’s head and recording their brain’s electrical activity. Based on this data, neurologists were able to detect certain brain abnormalities since brain waves change as a function of disease states. Being young myself, I was especially saddened when a young woman whose EEG I conducted was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I hadn’t dealt with early death or the potential for early death at this time in my life, and it impacted me greatly, and I never forgot her.”
Related* “Ice House” by Ann Giard-Chase * “Invisible” by Ann Giard-Chase * “Trajectory” by Ann Giard-Chase
Francesca Bell
SANDWICHES
I decide it would be a good idea to write them down, the first four things you’re likely to forget on your journey down dementia’s long path, a path that will eventually be strewn with all your discarded memories the way the path to the person dead from hypothermia is strewn with their cast-off articles of clothing that lie bright and useless on the snow. But I can’t remember them. The four things. Or the article’s title. I’m pretty sure there are four things, but four is my lucky number, and maybe I’ve merely glommed onto what is familiar, the way a person who’s wandered off-course might walk in whatever wrong direction most resembles home. I try searching my phone, where I read the piece, but it turns out I can’t find the way to my phone’s memory either, and when I Google four things you may forget and signs of dementia, several lists of ten items appear, and ten is at least six too many to keep track of, so I don’t bother writing any of it down. For some reason, this reminds me of the story I told last night at dinner, a story I meant to take note of, but first, I think, since I’m constructing records, I should finally make that list of all the men I’ve slept with. So I do, but I reach early on one name I simply cannot summon, the name of the guy who took me to the snow for a whole day and only brought one sandwich, which turned out to be just what sleeping with him was like: a trip to the cold with only half a sandwich to hold you. I write Sandwiches where his name should be and go on. But when I reach the end of the list, my lifetime total is five under what I thought I tallied years ago meaning five additional names and the men they belong to may (or may not) have leapt from memory’s cliff. Frustrated, I turn the page to write the story I told at last night’s dinner— a story I might, in fact, have told my family before, now that I think of it—and find that it, too, has vanished along with those men I now can neither remember nor forget, men who may have entered my body without leaving so much as a trace on my mind. Perhaps it will return to me later, the story. Maybe even the men will wander back across my blinkered brain, naked, with or without sandwiches, maybe a little snow falling outside the window, their penises memorable this time, overpowering enough that my mind will finally have something solid to hold onto. But I don’t really think so. I don’t think I’ll find the way to those memories again. Or to the article about the four early losses of dementia, one more list of losses, too many losses to possibly keep count of. There is a name for this precise feeling, I know there is, this feeling that wells and wells and almost spills over. Like a Scot with snow, I’m a poet with hundreds of different ways to name sorrow, but, though I sit for a long time as dusk seeps in, I’m only ever able to put my finger on one. —from Poets Respond
March 27, 2022
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Francesca Bell: “When I read this article about four things a person might first become forgetful about as they begin to develop Alzheimer’s, I thought I ought to keep a little eye on myself. But I promptly forgot the four things I should be watching for. And the name of the article. And where I had read it. Which ended up inspiring a bumpy trip down memory lane and this poem.” (web)
Related* “Containment” by Francesca Bell * from A Conversation with Marvin Bell * A Conversation with Timothy Steele
Robert Archambeau
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF SLEEPLESS NIGHTS
As if in a cold war spy flick, it is a foggy night. You pull up to the striped and lowered roadblock and the checkpoint guard, fat in his overcoat, breathes gin down your neck as he thumbs through your passport. He stamps it with the black and oily barn-owl crest. You know what’s through that mountain pass, you’ve been before. Insomnia speaks a harsh and stuttered language– in it all your answers sound like questions– and on her cobbled capital streets all friends are strangers. You know what you’ll find among the natives: their milk is black, storms rage in their living-rooms, bones grow in the tongues of the old, who cannot speak. The sun burns out his days in exile, pacing a poor and sweaty chamber, and you, the black-gloved master spy, you light another cigarette. The guard has waved you through. Your headlights glare like lidless eyes. —from Rattle #21, Summer 2004
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Robert Archambeau: “I write poetry because it is what Immanuel Kant would do if he were Jimi Hendrix; because it is what James Brown would do if he were John Stuart Mill. It is midway between music and abstract thinking.” (web)
Related* “American Election” by David Romtvedt * A Conversation with Rhina P. Espaillat * A Conversation with Troy Jollimore
Richard Westheimer
MY FATHER TRANSFORMED BY DYING
I sat with him alone in the hospice room. The breathing machine noises made a nap-drowse muddle of me and I nearly lost sight of his star receding from here to some galaxy far from where he was, a place utterly unlike the stern man I knew, who was so cool to the touch. He would often cite Kant—that it was better to think than feel, until he suffered a private revival on learning of his cancer, a death sentence in three quick acts. He asked me to call him “Pop” rather than “Father,” his feelings, new, under siege—he, now, less a man and more a near naked patient with no room to move but away, as he became less “star” and more a small part of an unknown galaxy, warm in the night sky. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Richard Westheimer: “Like most of the poems I write, this one surprised me as it unfolded. I began with three words written at the top of my page: ‘galaxy,’ ‘incongruous,’ and ‘cool.’ What emerged was a reflection about my father, who died almost 25 years ago. A bonus surprise (poetic turn?) came when I shared it with my sisters—neither readers of poetry. Image after image (sometime more from the universe of Truth rather than that of fact) prompted the recounting of long set-aside memories of our father—mostly experiences unique to one or another of us—which we shared for the first time.”
Related* “An American Jew Fails to Make Sense of the Carnage in Gaza” by Richard Westheimer * “I, Like Muons” by Richard Westheimer * “Into the Metaverse” by Richard Westheimer
Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2022: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Diaphona” by Sarah-Jane Crowson. “Homemaker” was written by Mary Meriam for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Mary Meriam
HOMEMAKER
Mother of Earth, conceive the art of home, give birth to jellyfish, the start of home. My drawings screw the seeds to root and grow to green, the frame of every part of home. Didn’t she sex the trees from outer space? Wasn’t blue-black my counterpart of home? The miles I travel hard until my head is antlered, both the doe and hart of home. I have this reaching after flight, this dress that doesn’t fit, fast birds, my heart of home. Dismiss my poverty and build for me a golden house to hang the art of home. She steers the moon, the clouds that lift and roll the chariot of time, the chart of home. Marvel of whales, of mythic story-telling, of seas that never drift apart, of home. —from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2022, Artist’s Choice
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Comment from the artist, Sarah-Jane Crowson: “I thought that this was such a beautiful ghazal, and that the ghazal form worked so well with the collage form of the artwork. I loved how within each image I can read ideas from the original picture, but I also love how these are taken in a new direction, creating new narratives or possible narratives—the poet’s creative response changing the ideas in the picture, transforming these into something different. I thought that the choice of form also aligned really well with collage as a medium—both, perhaps, thread together images that draw strength from each other whilst being in some ways dislocated. I also really appreciated the technical skill of the poem—how the quafia and radif worked so beautifully together, and the iambic patterning of the poem held it all together.”
Related* “Alone in Love” by Mary Meriam * “Sister Moon” by Jane Williams * “Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park, Florida” by Vivian Shipley
Emily Sernaker
LUCKY ENOUGH
*“If you’re lucky enough to be Irish,
you’re lucky enough.”
—Irish proverb*
Isn’t it grand to know the Irish
are out there saluting magpies,
braiding St. Brigid crosses,
calling their meat “fuckin gorgeous,”
calling idiots “fuckin eejits!”
driving on the left side of the road
over a bridge shaped like a harp
in a city dotted with statues
of literary heroes where even taxi drivers
sound like historians spouting lessons
about Kilmainham Jail, Michael
Collins, the whole place understanding
how they got there, the whole
day open like a guitar case
loaded with tips from busking,
an afternoon tilt like a perfect pint,
in a land with good chocolate
and no snakes, where airport
security stamps your passport
with green ink after the pilot
says: A Hundred Thousand Welcomes!
over the intercom, where strangers
ensure your success in finding
the Armagh church your great great
grandparents were married in,
old stones and stuffed rain
clouds, violins and rhubarb,
Claddagh rings turned taken
or free, yellow flowers sprawling
hills of Howth, Wicklow
waterfalls, walks you’ll revisit
in dreams, like that massive
lake spanning across St. Stephens
where swans actually glide
toward one another, bumping
heads, making a heart
with their necks?
—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
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Emily Sernaker: “I’m grateful for the Irish—their stories, songs, humor, and heart—and think fondly of them, especially around St. Patrick’s Day.” (web)
Related* “Now, When I Think About Women” by Emily Sernaker * “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Alive!” by Emily Sernaker * “I Have Confidence” by Emily Sernaker
Mary Meadows
WHITE PRIVILEGE SKYDIVES WITH BLACK GUY IN APPALACHIA
*While escaping Hillbilly Days in Eastern Kentucky
I learn “tandem jump,” and, years later, “Shibboleth”*
We sit at the fold-out tables in a gray room at the airport on the hill, where the coal mine barons store their private jets and fly to places that aren’t “locked” between mountains. And they tell us to watch a video about the buckles on our suits, how to pop our ears while falling and lift our legs high enough so our butts sandpaper the ground. Don’t land on your feet, but if you do, try to walk it out. It’s best to ass- bump it. And this salty blond surfer-looking dude chews a toothpick, then eyes us down— (like he’s picking a puppy at the pound). And he slaps the table with the palm of his hand; Why the heck—(he smirks)— why the heck would someone who’s sane jump out of a perfectly good airplane? And when we look at each other—Dude screams back, ’Cause, you fools, you left the dang door open! And we laugh, and he laughs from his gut, then assigns me to this thin black guy, and I’m not sure he’s strong enough to hold me up. I’ve gained a few pounds and this jumpsuit’s too tight. So I try to breathe and smile at the same time. And with his hands, he tugs buckles on my back and near that sacred between my legs. And there’s Aunt Betty, again, and her finger tick tocks in front of me, like we’re swimming at the Breaks and she says I can’t swing out on that rope. And I realize I’m twenty-five and I’ve never been this close to a black person before, and I think back to grade school and high school and—No. There were none. In college, they were the ones on ball teams, but they weren’t in my classes. Then, I bend over to tie my shoe, and there’s Amy— who was half my age when she lived next door to my sister in that trailer park when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. So, now, I’m at a picnic table—book open—and, we just learned in school how old Abe freed those slaves. And I know something mean happened to them, but they never really explained it. And I know they have this other skin, I think, from this other place, and I know they were beaten and sold, but I don’t know What. That. Means. And Amy is so cute with her hair back like that, and that sunny smile and little butterfly earrings. But she wants to play, and she’s jumping on my back and she pulls me from my seat. And I’m on the ground and she screams, jumping up and down above me. I stand up and sit back down, and she’s pecking my shoulders, tugging my shirt. And I just want to do a good job on this test I’m studying for, so I’m writing all the dates of things that happened. And she won’t stop tug- hugging my neck. Her finger slips and she scratches my skin. —And it just blurts out. —What? Do you think I’m a slave, or something?— And her face —its light— melts like sun bows to night on the west side of the mountain. And when I see my shoes on the floor in this room, I remember I never saw her after that because she moved away. And—for a second—I’m that stringy-headed cow, again, who’s smacked in the head like a dog while being told You’re mangy. You filthy thing. And I swallow the muck and look up— And that guy who touched me tells me I’m Good to go, Girl, then points to the door where the plane waits to take us up. And I feel it resist that thrust from the earth. Then I feel the lift that starts in my stomach, then belches in waves to my brain. And after a while, he tethers me to his body and I am a key on a ring attached to a wire line that stretches across the tops of our heads. And I look around for the others, but they’re not there, and I don’t want to go, but I feel his legs behind my thighs, push-walking my left, then my right, to the door—wide open— where wind is cussing and I want to say, No wait! But it throws a fist at me, and he says, Are you ready? And I want to say Hell yeah! or something even better, but all I can muster is Okay— No! Wait! And then this hurricane shoves me—and the plane and time and everything is gone, and it’s just cold sky and different shades of green and their open ’chutes— Plucked petals. Poured. From a cup. And I’m looking through a glass at a painting—Oh my God!—And then I’m a rock that dives off the edge of some waterfall, watching everything that splattered before I came. And I keep saying Ohmy God! And I keep telling myself, This is it! And I wonder what God would say of my jumping like this. Would I be the fool or the wiser? And a man in a yellow suit with a camera buzzes out in front of me. Gives me a thumbs up; stretches his mouth wide, with fingers, into a smile. But I can’t— can’t move my arms or legs because the wind is fierce and it feels like I’m falling, and that push is the hand that holds me up—And I don’t want to break it. He smiles and spreads his arms like wings and I try to do that, and then I perk up my thumbs. But I can’t feel my wrists anymore and I don’t know if I’m breathing. Then, there’s this yank, and, now, I know I’m alive, and I look down, and the painting has leaves and trees with long brown trunks; and I see a road where ants drive toy cars and move sand on sidewalks. And this guy on my back is steering in circles, and I am the hawk. I lower my beak to watch rabbits, and they dunk under bushes, so, I am the moth. And they get bigger and closer, and I become a thunderstorm that screams in the distance, then sneaks up and pounds on the porch— until I can’t feel God anymore, but I really want to because I’m near the base of this drop and I’m sure it’s full of rocks and I know I’m gonna hit— And the trees that were once smaller than me stretch until they tower over grass; and I can’t stop watching them reach for what I came from, until I bump my rump and shake my head and blink my eyes. And this guy on my back, who’s, now, by my side; reaches over and throws me a high five, so I breathe and put my feet on the ground to stand up— And something in me is wailing— So I step back to smile— And, for a second, it’s like we’re alone, making love, and we speak with our eyes— So I wrap him up like he’s part of my breathing. And when the others come, I step back and fold up his eyes and I stuff them down— Down, in my pocket, where Sweet. Beautiful. Amy. Cries. And he and I— we hold out our hands to show them how not nervous we are— And I— I Am! And I look, again, at this Black Guy by my side and I— —dammit!— I am the ant. That fell. From a leaf. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Mary Meadows: “I can’t go back and change what I said to ‘Amy’ when we were kids, but I hope it brings her solace to know that there’s a part of me that’s hated myself ever since. I think of her sometimes and I worry that this memory haunts her like it haunts me. I hope it doesn’t. I hope she was too young to remember it. And, if not, I hope it was the only time in her life that she ever had to deal with something like that. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I wish I could go back and fix it, but I can’t.”
Related* “On Strike for My Union Daddy, West Virginia, 1933” by Mitzi Dorton * “For Ahmaud Arbery, an Unarmed Black Jogger Killed for Allegedly Looking in the Window of a House Under Construction” by Michael Meyerhofer * “Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park, Florida” by Vivian Shipley
Al Ortolani
READING WILLIAM STAFFORD AFTER THE RUSSIANS SHELL THE NUCLEAR REACTOR AT ZAPORIZHZHIA
There’s a place in the woods where we walk, dog ahead, nosing out voles, the scent of rabbits, whatever has left itself behind from the night. I follow, slower than I once did, but still able with my one good eye to see that the trees are junipers, blue berries lit with tomorrow, more vivid than the evergreen’s fan of needles, the spray of stored sunlight. In the deep branches an invisible bird breaks into trills, songs to warn others of our passing. We have our moment here today, and tomorrow, well maybe, we are just a trail, what we’ve left behind from our daylight, boot prints in the mud, paw prints circling back upon themselves, a good nose, an eye on hope, following a trail through the woods without war, without bombs, without fires which tomorrow’s children must fight. —from Poets Respond
March 15, 2022
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Al Ortolani: “I woke last week and found that Putin’s army had escalated its war by shelling the nuclear power plant near Zaporizhia, a place I’d never heard of until today. The danger is horrible. Consider Chernobyl, not so far away. Consider the future laid to waste. I picked up a copy of William Stafford’s poems and read.” (web)
Related* “The Senate Vows Impartial Justice” by Al Ortolani * “Switch Plate” by Al Ortolani * “Eighth Grade Industrial Arts” by Al Ortolani
Dayna Hodge Lynch
BLACK BOYS AS FIREFLIES
We watch the blue Lights in the trees An August night with the air trapped between God’s palms From the front porch Ma and I can see my brother Swarmed with 5 cars Guns drawn He’s trying to get home To us I don’t want him to fly into the night My brother complies with every order Making a point to not move too fast Or talk with the grit we’re used to We wait As the blue lights disappear Into the night once again Conjured incantation of survival magic Is this why everyone wants to cage them? I see fewer of them every time I go outside The sirens Alert the neighborhood In warning Don’t be who you are when we can see you —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Dayna Hodge Lynch: “Being raised in the arts, poetry was always there and I fell in love. When I was five, my momma performed ‘When Malindy Sings’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I wanted from that moment on to make people feel through the poetry I had to share. Poetry creates spaces to be heard. I write to explore and expand my own beliefs.”
Related* “Of Thee I Sing” by Sarah Wells * “And Also I Ran” by Lance Larsen * “Cathedrals: Ode to a Deported Uncle” by Daniel Arias Gómez
Agnieszka Tworek
ABEL’S LAST WORDS TO CAIN
A sparrow from my orchard flew by your house as you gunned me down Brother, why do you sow my frozen fields with copper and lead? What can sprout in spring from these bullet seeds? In this black soil I grow wheat I could bake you such a crusty loaf of bread Why do my fruit trees have combat wounds? Why do my sheep and cows lay dead? Why do women weave the sky’s threads and use them as gauze bandages? Brother, you could still bring me back to life to love to light if you don’t bomb the hospital where my pregnant wife prays that our newborn son’s first cry won’t be his last Why is the snow falling into my mouth and why is it red? Brother, you could still —from Poets Respond
March 13, 2022
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Agnieszka Tworek: “Each day of this senseless war brings new atrocities. There are many innocent civilians dead—men, women, and children who cannot be properly buried. This week the world witnessed in horror the Russian soldiers bombing Ukrainian hospitals, including a maternity and children’s hospital. There are no words …”
Related* “The Book of Revelation with a Rare Audio Recording of Abel’s Monologue” by O-Jeremiah Agbaakin * Five Poems for Ukraine by Kim Stafford * “Ossuary” by Ariana Brown
Sherman Pearl
DEMOLITION DERBY
There’s an innocence in these surrogate battles between cars—all the bodies are fortified to withstand the crashes, all the doomed are made of metal. Aggressors seem to comfort their victims, backing away almost ruefully after smashing them into nightmare versions of the showroom beauties they’d been. There is grace in how the hulks accept fate, how still they stand, hoods sprung open as signs of surrender; and courage in the way wounded competitors keep charging like heart-pierced bulls until one by one they stop, finally spent, and stand bleeding black into the dirt. And when only one remains mobile with nothing left to attack there is love in the winner’s victory wave. My kid and I used to wave to each other like that across electrified little battlefields at amusement parks. We’d laugh from the padded insides of our bumper cars then ram each other like tanks intent on destruction. Every jolt felt like affection; each collision was a way of touching. —from Rattle 29, Summer 2008
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Sherman Pearl: “I started writing poetry well after age 50. By that time I’d experienced enough joy and anguish to know what I wanted to write about. The closer I came to retirement from payroll-type work the faster I segued into a (mostly) non-paid career in poetry. I now face the frightening prospect of never being able to retire again…too much of my life story is still untold.”
Related* “Feeding the Dead” by Sherman Pearl * “Rain” by Elizabeth Volpe * “Sunday Picnic on the Vltava” by Tera Vale Ragan
Rayon Lennon
FOLLOW ME
to the teenage black employee who followed me, a black man, in a grocery store
Imagine there’s no light between us and all we know is the darkness that binds us while I decide if I desire 2 percent or whole milk. You trail 12 feet behind as I push a cart of goods like a baby. You’re a kid, it seems, a boy of no more than 19 buried in your cell, looking once or twice my way. Your white gray manager nods oppression. You don’t think to puncture commands from high. You spin time into money. Your work reduced to studying people like you and me to see whether I’m worth more than the overflowing cart I struggle to steer. I have known this earth for 37 years. I know a few many things, like everything is connected, like slavery to now. You follow me like an overseer with spoiled power. I pause at the Aunt Jemima syrups which are bitter with stereotypes. You follow me to the self-checkout counter, pretending to still be lost in your cell. I scan each item and pay for it all with the sum I earn as an in-home family therapist empowering kids your age to climb above systems. I show teeth and tell you to have a warm week. You say you were only doing your job. Yes, I don’t say. The job of keeping racism alive. The light butcher shakes his caged dreads. Like us, tanked lobsters battle each other with taped claws. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
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Rayon Lennon: “I was 13 the first time I was followed in a store. I had just moved from Jamaica to Hamden, Connecticut. The male employee followed me in the dollar store as I looked at items. For some reason, he thought I was there to steal. I didn’t understand it. I had saved up all my lunch money to buy a cheap fake gold chain with a Jamaican flag pendant. After 10 minutes, the man simply asked me to leave. I said I didn’t do anything wrong; I hadn’t stolen anything and didn’t intend to steal anything. He said he was tired of following me. I said I was tired of being followed. He called the police. The snow came before the police. I got on a city bus and saw the police entering the store as the bus moved off. I was 13. America showed me who it was then. It’s particularly disheartening to be 37 and still being followed in stores. It’s even more disheartening when the employee following me is a Black teenage employee (being directed by an oppressive boss). While workshopping this poem, a white member of the group said, ‘Forgive me for sounding ignorant, but why were they following you in the store? What did they think you were going to do?’ It’s such an easy answer. But I thought about it more. Yes. They followed me because they thought I would steal; but they followed me too to try to make me believe I don’t belong, to rob me of my sense of feeling at home in America. Racism is mostly about power—most people don’t want to root it out because they don’t want to lose power/privileges. The Black teen who followed me in the store was probably acting the way he did to share in that power. It’s unfortunate what people must do to survive in this country. I have been asked by managers to do tasks that run counter to my values; I always challenge these requests, but I have made poor decisions as well—decisions which disempowered me and others. A friend said I should have been nicer to the Black teenage employee in the poem. It’s a poem powered by frustration and rage. I didn’t want to take that away from the poem. It’s important that I hold everyone accountable, even an oppressed teen. It’s especially sad and harmful when oppressed people, knowingly and unknowingly, help to spread racist ideology. Awareness is key. I’m a nice guy who only gets angry in my poems. In some ways, I’m not so much angry at the teen as I am angry at a nation which could turn out a vaccine for Covid in a year, but can’t seem to find a social vaccine for racism, centuries later.” (web)
Related* “I, Stutter” by Rayon Lennon * “Unrest” by Rayon Lennon * “Red Brick Town” by Rayon Lennon
Liliana Ursu
CIRCLES AND CIRCLES
The circle of roses in the park hidden deep in the shadow of apartment towers is nothing like the moon-cool circle of milk carried in the pitcher by the nun’s hands, splashing its slow light on the grassy path—or the sweet circle of honey that swerves before dawn inside the bear stalked by hunters while dew and mist beat the forest’s staccato call to prayer on the toaca. The circle of wild strawberries I offered, incapable of healing the dark circles under my mother’s eyes during her last summer. Or the mirror of the iron band girdling the old oak tree, attracting clouds, hours, seconds— that steady, gentle flow of the day’s tide. A streak of lightning and all the circles break open. Thunder, and they contract, then merge into one, burning on the surrendered hand like a ring of fire around fire.
translated by the poet, Adam J. Sorkin & Tess Gallagher
—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
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Adam J. Sorkin: “I fell into translation by chance some 25 years ago and never got over it. John Dryden called translation a ‘disease,’ and it might well be seen as an addiction for which (fortunately) there is no Translators Anonymous—although that’s what translators usually are, invisible, at the bottom of the page and often missing from the book cover.”
Liliana Ursu was born in Sibiu, Romania, which figures prominently in many of her eight books of poetry in Romanian. Her first book in English, The Sky Behind the Forest (Bloodaxe, 1997), translated by Ursu, Sorkin, and Gallagher, became a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation and was shortlisted for Oxford’s Weidenfeld Prize.
Related* “How to Be a Cowgirl in a Studio Apartment” by Carolyn Creedon * “Istovitu Works the Nightshift” by Nora Iuga * “The Sea Turtle” by Mary H. Palmer
Rachel Mallalieu
19th NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
I had this friend whose mother had her 19th nervous breakdown the year the Stones released “19th Nervous Breakdown,” and let me tell you, that shit was funny when we were thirteen. We always knew his mom was headed for a hospital stay when instead of offering us cookies, she accused him of wanting sex with his grandma. This guy had a big brother who also was not right in the head, and he checked himself into the loony bin and stayed six weeks. He left when they kicked him out and said he owed five thousand bucks. The brother did not take that well and wept and screamed; we all told him to shut up and get a grip. Instead, he went to the basement and put a shotgun into his mouth. No one knew what happened until the hound dog dropped a piece of his skull under the kitchen table. This friend was a good son. We all got married but he still lived with his dad. Each night, they shared a pack of cigarettes and ate their frozen dinners on card tables, but those cigarettes came hard. His pop’s lungs failed and he died quick. Then he shared his dinner with the dog and tried to quit smoking. I know the kind of guy you’re imagining— long stringy hair and the crooked teeth he would hide behind his hand if he smiled. You wouldn’t be wrong. But he also kept track of birthdays, sent money to his deadbeat younger brother and kept a list of questions he wanted to ask me in a file labeled with my name. One day he asked me if a person went straight to Hell if he killed himself. I said of course not, but wondered if he was thinking about it. He mumbled no, he was too chickenshit, and promised to call me if that changed. You see where this is heading. He lost his job, his health insurance, and had a fight with his younger brother. He went to the funeral home, paid for a casket and asked that no obituary be published. He cleaned his house, wrote his will and slipped the rope around his neck. He did not call. It was days before anyone found him. But appreciating a dog’s proclivities, he had already placed the animal in a shelter. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
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Rachel Mallalieu: “I’m an emergency physician and mother of five. I write poetry to survive both!”
Related* “June 2020” by Rachel Mallalieu * “Delta” by Rachel Mallalieu * “In the County for a PR” by Tiffanie Desmangles
Abby E. Murray
THE RIGHT TO JOY
It happened: I stepped outside on a Tuesday morning and, noticing cloudlessness over the city, the hydrangea happiness of all that blue, I began to doubt my delight, suddenly aware of what I turned away from in order to turn toward comfort. I called LeAnne, thousands of miles away. Just as I suspected: it was raining where she was, the sky dull as pencil lead, the nights oozing past on rivulets of fog. Her last memory of a sunset was two weeks old and she was getting ready to go for a walk anyway. I hung up and refused to enjoy the daylight I hadn’t earned. I worked in the basement with the blinds drawn, picking at my keyboard like a starved chicken. My fingers froze. I couldn’t feel anything I wrote. At lunch, I surfaced in the kitchen to make a sandwich and checked the windows: the sky was still there, brighter now, emboldened even, a blaze of sun on the windowpane like God peeping in to laugh. Truly, the sky above me was flawless cerulean, not even airplanes signing it in their fine script as they floated up and down the eastern seaboard. I didn’t falter. I spent a few more hours in the dark, writing about greyness. LeAnne called and asked if I’d read the article about the photographer who found polar bears living in an abandoned weather station on a Russian island in the Chukchi Sea: a deserted village of wooden buildings, some half-collapsed, all covered in rot and moss and proof of a climate dictated by storms and ice and harshness, only the broken windows reveal less emptiness than the photographer or any of us expect: massive polar bears poke their faces over the splintered sills to blink at the camera, which is attached to a drone so as not to frighten them too much, and I don’t speak polar bear but in these photos they seem to be saying hello, this is ours now, and I have to agree, as I imagine the photographer did, because I don’t think anyone can disagree with polar bears even in pictures, even the ones who seem pacified and pleased, albeit by chance, with their sudden luck, which they must know is theirs while they have it because they have it but not for always. They are dying along with the rest of us. It isn’t fair or unfair. A weather town was built by humans for humans, then claimed by bears for the newly fortunate. Since when have accidents been just? Since when does happiness choose its beholder? The polar bears curl up on their new porches like they’re waiting for a pie to cool. They let the drone do its thing. They let it leave. I tell LeAnne I need to get to the post office before it closes and when I open my front door the afternoon is still hanging on, still luminous but goldening, more bronze than blue now, as if wizened, as if to say I can take it or leave it, this joy, this surprise gift, this nectar of air I didn’t grow or pay for but woke up and found just the same, as if to say it had only one plan for its life and that was to end whether I savored it or not. —from Poets Respond
February 8, 2022
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Abby E. Murray: “I was in the middle of writing about joy and who has the rights to it when it happens to them when I saw Dmitry Kokh’s photos of polar bears inhabiting the abandoned weather station/village on Kolyuchin, an island in the Chukchi Sea. They poke their heads out of the windows to get a look at the camera, which was mounted on a drone. They sniff the air. They sit on their bums in the grass. They curl up like dogs. Every time I see polar bears I think about how we are killing them, but damn, they look happy right now! My writing turned into this meditation on joy in the face of so many crises, even when it is gratitude for a blue sky in the midst of bomb cyclones, nor’easters, and climate change.” (web)
Related* “What the Dead Man Taught Me” by Abby E. Murray * “Memorial Day 2015” by Abby E. Murray * “This Is Only a Test” by Abby E. Murray
William Logan
PRIVATE ROAD
Dusty, sun-stroked, the attic rose in sepia haze, a photograph c. 1880: broad floorboards laid down before the Civil War, square-nailed, lined up in lockstep. The old colonial, ours for two decades, reached the low point of that once vast estate, the winding drive half gone to grass, two antique oaks slanted toward firewood, and, in the back quarter, shrubby remains that forgot to be formal gardens. The basement, walls old boulders lain to foundation, seethed a cheerful vegetable air. Reduced to two acres, the mansion had been surrounded by houses generations younger, like an old roué by children whose names he cannot remember. The massive horse-chestnut trailed its skirts on barren ground, concealing a bower of greenery within. From the demilune windows in the attic, on a clear day you could see Connecticut. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
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William Logan: “I write poems for the only sensible reason, the big bucks. The muse is good company, but she doesn’t carry a wallet.”
Related* “Glosa” by Diane Seuss * “Unbounded” by Russell Bittner * “What I Remember of World War II” by Dan Gerber
Lauren Jensen-Deegan
CARROT GINGER
I will call her Alice, because her name is insolent. I will take my frustration out on the cutting board, each layer of shallot peeled, sliced and separated. I will call her a pathetic excuse for a co-worker, because her name is inconsiderate, in my husband’s face day after day, mask below her chin, insisting she is wearing it while breathing on him who will breathe I love you upon our daughter who will then breathe upon Dylan and Maggie while learning to swim, each labored stroke to move forward or at the very least stay afloat 5 seconds unassisted. Enough. I will call her a poor example of a human being, not because she declines to be vaccinated, but because she refuses to consider why 211 million people in America do. I will call her nothing, because her name means nothing and everything to me, empty pop cans, pennies, as she holds a magnet up to my husband’s arm testing to see if it will stick. It means too much. Too little. Too far gone. I will call her our tomorrow because her four children call her mom and will grow up being taught there is only one way to tie your shoes, never knowing, different versions, recipes, roads and this terrifies me. That she takes a family photo in front of a whale carcass washed up on the beach. That one day her only son will ask Santa for a gun and she will wrap it for him, bow and all, because this is her right, as well? I’m so tired, so lost in our dying seas, a fishing net, this web, closed doors of communication, lack of a greater good, sacrifice, offered hand, why not, humanity, it all— I will call her Alice, because her name is AJ, Kevin, Andrea, Dave, the man not wearing a mask at North Park Market, the neighbor yelling behind the fence, and she will never even read these words, know they exist, understand how much she has challenged our family while she scrolls Facebook for facts and affirmations. I will call her the antithesis to every teaspoon of my existence not for our conflicting views, but all the nights I spend awake still trying to place myself in her steel toe boots, her church, her apartment, her cubicle where she coughs each particle, each tiny breath, willful complaint against the government, my husband inhaling it all in, second-hand, internalizing, bringing it home, because he has no choice except listen. As I do. Each night, one shallot at a time, carrot, celery, ginger root, apple, baring all the sorrow turned rage within me, my 5-year-old asking if she can help stir the soup. —from Poets Respond
February 6, 2022
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Lauren Jensen-Deegan: “I thought a new year would be a new year, but it feels so much like just another. Last week the Oregon Health Authority began filing to make mask mandates ‘permanent’ in certain sectors rekindling a fire that continues to burn. I’m tired.”
Related* “Profane Androgen” by Brody Parrish Craig * “In the Pipeline’s Path” by Annie Woodford * “Why I Don’t Write Poems About 9/11” by Vicki Iorio
Harry Newman
PRIMITIVES
the night we saw the mouse in our apartment you wouldn’t take your feet off the couch for an hour staring at the space beneath the dresser where it ran and when you did finally you stamped through the room stamped and made noises lifting your arms into the air as in some tribal ritual for scaring away the dead I grabbed a broom to hunt it I’ve killed a few I tell you inching towards the corner crouched and poised to strike in slippers and underwear a parody of early man my cave with mice instead of mastodons on the walls how primitive we seemed then primitive and hopeless lost against the wild things the ancient fears returning —from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Harry Newman: “For me, poems usually start as a whisper. When I least expect it a word, an image, a feeling turns my mind. Or lines appear suddenly after pages of writing. I like the mystery of this, not knowing where a poem came from or where it’s going. If I had to say why I write, it’s to return to this state of not-knowing, to become less afraid of it, to leave the false familiarity of the known until it starts to seem strange as well.” (web)
Related* A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield * from a Conversation with Chris Anderson * A Conversation with Timothy Steele
Susan L. Lipson
SHARING WOUNDS WHILE CARD SHOPPING
My sudden “Psh!” in the greeting card aisle raises the eyebrows of other shoppers in search of the perfect Mothers’ Day card, some of whom flash stiff smiles at me and step away, others who shake their heads or frown as they resume reading heart-covered, mushy messages like, “Mom, you are my role model in every way,” which evoked my sardonic outburst. Every May, after the successful shoppers scurry away, carrying their fortunately appropriate cards to the cashier, one shopper always remains to sigh with me in harmony. It’s our annual, impromptu meeting of Dutiful Daughters Anonymous, a sober sisterhood of The Dissed— disgruntled, disappointed, disrespected, disconnected, disturbed, disillusioned, distraught, discarded. I don’t introduce myself at this meeting, or publicly declare my identity as a Recovering Masochist, only murmur, “Finding an appropriate card shouldn’t be so hard,” then watch for the nod, usually followed by a bittersweet smile. “How ’bout this one?” she asks, handing me another card with absurdly inappropriate praise for a mom’s “unconditional love,” or “selfless devotion,” or “loving support.” Shared snickers establish our quirky camaraderie. “Aw, look, here’s the perfect card: ‘For Mom, my best friend…’” “Yeah, right!” The card retreats, unloved, behind a solid lavender envelope. “If your mom has a sense of humor—hah!” That card drops like the mic of a booed comedian. “I got it! ‘To my dear Mom, who brought me into this world…’” Instantly, we blurt in unison: “And I can take you OUT of it, too!” Vibrating with laughter, I replace the card, upside down. Our guffaws draw the attention of a store employee, who peers over the card rack from the other side, asking if we need help finding something. We sober up, shake our heads, read, replace, read, replace… I spot a simple card, no hearts, no sweet mother-daughter pictures, only a vase of flowers and the inner message, “Happy Mother’s Day.” I grab a duplicate for my stranger-friend. “You might like this one, too,” I say, before I wave goodbye. In line for the cash register, we stand silently, strangers again, but now less alone— one behind the other, each of us holding for the other obligatory cards meant for anyone’s mother. —from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
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Susan L. Lipson: “I write poetry to connect with familiar strangers, even if only for the length of time it took them to absorb my words and feel that I deeply understood them. Sometimes a literal connection with a stranger (say, in a card shop) sparks my poems, often tinged with awe and/or irony, and so I dedicate these verses to the familiar (and quasi-familial) strangers who share my emotional history.” (web)
Related* “Sparrows” by Chera Hammons * “Salt” by M * “Mothering Solo” by Khadijah Queen