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On Sunday, January 15th, Rattle held a reading for issue #36 at the Church in Ocean Park, in Santa Monica, CA. Eight poets from the issue read samples of their work:

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.

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Leah Nielsen

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

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Mathias Nelson

I ONLY DANCE FOR MY MOTHER

She gives me the wine
and I take the wine.

I mop her floors
and she walks on them
while they’re still wet
so I begin to dance
to warn her of how
easy one can slide.

She watches
grinning in her old green jacket
before going outside
to see the moon on the snow.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

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Kathryn Mockler

TWISTER

The Evangelical Christian
was so busy
tying up his shoelace
that he failed
to notice the twister
fast approaching.
When he finally stood up
and saw dark clouds
surrounded by a funnel-shaped force,
he said to himself, “My Lord,
is that Armageddon?”

“No,” said the postman
who had just put a large package
in the Evangelical Christian’s
mailbox, “it’s a tornado.”
The package
had been weighing
the postman down since
this morning,
and he was glad to be
relieved of it.

“Should we take cover?”
asked the Evangelical Christian.

“I suppose,” said the postman,
“but I still have
all this mail to deliver.”

“Well, you could rest here,”
the Evangelical Christian suggested,
“and wait for the storm to pass.”

The postman
looked up at the charcoal sky,
at the leaves and twigs blowing
in the unrelenting wind.
The birds and animals were taking cover,
and the postman decided
he had better take cover too.

“I could make some tea,”
the Evangelical Christian offered,
“and we could sit on the porch
and watch the storm.
If the storm should get too rough,
we can take cover in the basement
where there’s a fruit cellar.”

“Sounds like a plan,”
said the postman as he
removed the mailbag
from his aching shoulder
and set it beside
a pot of red geraniums.

The neighbourhood
looked like a ghost town—
not person, or car, or animal in sight.
The postman supposed
everyone was either at work or school.
And the ones who were inside
probably always stayed in
even in good weather.

The postman had an aunt
who was agoraphobic.
She lived alone and had no children.
She died the way most hope to—
painlessly, peacefully in her sleep.

Because she never left the house
and had no family,
no one knew
she was no longer alive.
It was the smell
of her rotting corpse that
alerted her neighbours
in the adjacent apartment
to her condition.

The postman felt guilty
for not visiting his aunt more often
or taking more of an interest
in her affairs.
But truth be told,
she had not taken any
particular interest in him.
You get what you give—
or is it—
you give what you get?
In either case,
the postman thought,
communication
is a two-way street.

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

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Bruce McRae

GRASS IN MY HAIR

I was arguing
with the scarecrow.
His voice
was like a wall
of sand coming
closer and closer.
He had corn
on his breath
but no mouth
to speak of.
His mind
was a straw stalk
in the wind,
all the colours
of a golden
rainbow, there,
but not there,
even his pinstripes
soil-scented.
And I was saying
to the scarecrow,
“We end,
we begin.”
I was telling him
the true names
of all the dead.
I was asking
a stupid question:
“Where’s the crow
inside my head?”
Which he thought
quite funny,
a perpetual grin
on his dried lips,
his eyes seeing
into the far distance,
a tear forming
in the new silence
that summer, and he
impeccably dressed.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011