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 mechanical
as if it’s just about to break.”
I’ve a feeling           broken-hearted
he’s talking about himself
in relation to his ex-wife,
but I don’t tell him that. She called me break the news
just 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 exactly
where I knew he was at the time—in mid-schuss
breakneck on a mogul-filled downhill in Vail.
He wouldn’t be back for two days, and had no idea
it 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 EMERGENCY
BREAK GLASS.

Two weeks later we sat line break
in front of a ridiculous amount of beer.
I was trying, at that point, to explain to him
that humans didn’t invent weaving… breaking point
that it was an innovation of certain brightly colored,
long-beaked birds, and when we stumbled upon
the wonderful, twisted nests, we figured them out
by breaking them apart.
Something in him broke loose, I guess. I’d been talking
as if I could say anything groundbreaking
about love. In retrospect, he probably should’ve broke my nose,
but all he did was sit there, for the first time, slumped over
in 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

A BATTLESHIP EXAMINES ITS FAITH

I dream
towels, dust streams,
a downpour of talcum.
I dream arid fields of sorghum.
But down where I’m fattest: frogmen swimming
on wave-wings, stoking my belly with the kindling
of justice. Captain, I’m a billion-shot salute, but guns
aren’t made to pull their own triggers. The Baltic makes me run
until my sides buckle but won’t let me collapse.
I call this salt-soup Heaven, but perhaps
I’m misdirected. The angels
of my dreams never change:
unarmed and dry,
they fly.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

THE DOG

The six of us look as usual but we are all dogs
Around that Christmas table of 1999. My sister
Carves with the concentration of a sculptor
Trying to free the angel from stone. This is usual.

My brother carries the turkey to table
Losing a wing. This is usual. My daughters
Discuss whether Handel’s Messiah or Christmas
Music from around the world should be played.

This is usual. I pour the water, spilling water,
My husband pours the wine with expertise. This is
Usual. What is not usual: a year ago, Christmas ’98,
We were fifteen, now we are six. Experiencing

The long table as more than half empty. We look
As usual; shellshock does not show on the face.
We strip flesh from bone. We pass the dressing.
We eat. We drink. The modern part of us understands

That the rest of the family will not arrive. It under-
Stands that the house is silent because no children
Play downstairs. That Santa will not come, that Baby
Jesus has grown up fast, that since last Christmas

He’s been crucified, has become God, Who has reverted
To Yahweh, Who is out to teach us a hard lesson: death,
Divorce, estrangement. But the dog. The dog part of us
Has its ears up. It listens for a familiar motor, listens

For the back door to open, listens for the familiar
Footsteps, listens for the voices downstairs. All through
Dinner the dog is poised to run and jump and lick,
The dog is about to go crazy with joy.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

YOUR VILLAGE

slipknot, aerosol

or invertebrate, a thing
spineless

drawn out in sections and rewired
to complete the circuit

hot light
in each alcove, insomniac
the green yellow eyes

of a cat, blinking
in the dark

nothing put to sleep.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS WIFE’S DEATH

He thinks that time will heal. But this is fable.
He tries to call her friends. But is not able.
He wants to venture out. But is not stable.
Her photograph remains upon the table.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

Teresa Chuc Dowell
Alan Fox
Sonia Greenfield
Bruce McBirney
Peg Quinn
Diana M. Raab
Ephraim Scott Sommers
Craig van Rooyen

Teresa Chuc Dowell, a Fellow and teacher consultant of the Los Angeles Writing Project (a chapter of the National Writing Project), teaches English literature and writing at a public high school. Teresa has a bachelors degree in Philosophy, a Professional Teaching Credential in Education, and is currently a candidate for a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (poetry) at Goddard College. She serves as a poetry editor for the Pitkin Review. In 2011, Teresa founded Shabda Press. Teresa is also an organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Her first book-length collection, Red Thread is forthcoming from Fithian Press (2012).

Alan Fox founded Rattle in 1994, turning what began as a class chapbook into one of the largest and most prestigious literary magazines in the world. In the process, he has interviewed over 60 contemporary poets, a selection of which appeared as Rattle Conversations (Red Hen Press, 2008), and published over 40 of his own poems. He’ll be reading from his new manuscript of eight-line poems, Being There.

Sonia Greenfield is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Washington. Her poem “Passing the Barnyard Graveyard” appeared in Best American Poetry 2010.

Bruce McBirney earned his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley, and has been practicing in Los Angeles since 1979. He received his B.A. in English from Loyola Marymount University. McBirney’s poems have appeared in America, Measure, Spillway, The Formalist, The Lyric, and other journals, and anthologized in Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press, 2005).

Peg Quinn is a painter and an award-winning quilter and Pushcart-nominated poet and has been designing and painting murals in homes, offices, schools and institutions for over twenty-five years. She holds a BFA in Education from the University of Nebraska and an Elementary Teaching Credential from Cal. State Northridge and currently serves as Art Specialist at a local, private school.

Diana M. Raab, MFA, RN was born in Brooklyn, New York and received her undergraduate degree in Health Administration and Journalism in 1976. In 2003 she earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University’s low-residency program. She is the author of eight books. Her most recent release, Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey (2010) is a memoir/self-help book which includes reflections, experiences, journal entries and poems all emphasizing the healing power of writing. She has one poetry chapbook, My Muse Undresses Me and two poetry collections, Dear Anais: My Life in Poems For You, winner of the 2009 Next Generation Indie Award for Poetry, and The Guilt Gene. Currently, Raab teaches creative journaling and memoir in UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

Ephraim Scott Sommers was born in Atascadero, California and received his MFA from San Diego State University. A singer and guitar player, Sommers has produced three full-length albums of music and toured internationally both as a solo artist and with his band Siko. Most recently, his work has appeared in Afterimage, Barnstorm, Blue Earth Review, City Works, The Coachella Review, The Columbia Review, New Madrid, Philadelphia Stories, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Verse Daily. His poetry is forthcoming in Grasslimb, Harpur Palate, Paddlefish, and Rougarou. He is the managing editor of Flashpoint: A Journal of Literature and Music, and he teaches writing at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and Cuesta College.

Craig van Rooyen is a lawyer living in San Luis Obispo, CA. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, Willow Springs, The Christian Century, Boxcar Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and The Fourth River. He is a finalist for the 2011 Rattle Poetry Prize, and has another poem forthcoming in Rattle #37.

TEACHING SLANT RHYME

I have always wanted to write a poem in which lavender
rhymes with vendor or scavenger but mostly cadaver,

but the image—imagine a literary journal’s response —
seems inadvertently humorous—and there seems no nonchalant

way to pair them, to rhim them, as my students
say, which is a marked improvement

over their DO NOT RHYME policy
and their almost comic cacophonies

composed confidently through alliteration,
and when they get it, it becomes an addiction—

one kid rhims porridge with dirigible,
another, having fallen in love with Prufrock’s dreariness

and his own cleverness suggests fellatio and go,
and another student, in earnest, asks what’s fellatio,

and I try not to laugh, to let
another student

say it, but no one does—a blow job,
I blurt, having reached an all-time teaching low,

and another, seeing I am losing control
suggests go and polka dot

and they go down the cananendwordbetwowords path
and come back to craft,

which kind of goes with Pabsts, which one argues
is not that bad a beer, and so the impromptu

debate on the virtues of PBR,
which one declares sells well in this recession—or so he heard

on CNN—a connoisseur, he also notes the virtues
of Natty Light and when I ask for a 50% rhyme for virtue

he says river, rivet, turtle, true—here I should note that I stole
the percentage concept from an old

mentor who does not like to be called old. But never mind.
What do you say to a twenty-year-old who hears Kevlar

and thinks larva, lava, valley, ale, and just because
he can, adds vulva and uvula and pauses dramatically for guffaws?

I’m sorry, kid, but you’re going to be a poet.
And poet

is an orphan,
a word for which there are no pure rhymes, like orange.

I’m sorry you have a gift for words.
I’m sure your parents would have preferred

even geology over writing,
but here you are spiraling

spite, rips, lipid, dalliance, nascent, land,
                        and pyrrhic, hiccup, puce and pedal.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011