Wendy Videlock

DEAR UNIVERSE,

In all this calm,
in all this mist,
these vague shaped

continents

begin to drift.
A finger lifts,

falls again.
A foghorn sounds,

passionless.
Do you wonder

what we are
in all this calm,
in all this mist.

Wolf prints.

Red clay.

A slender wrist.

Murder. Magic.

Ballet.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

Jeff Vande Zande

MICROCOSM

She starts the engine, wanting
only the air conditioning.
He unloads their shopping cart
into the back and then slides
in against the scorching seat,
grips the wheel, and watches
her finger skim the receipt
until she finally announces
that the store didn’t charge
them for the table lamp.
They both turn around
as though to check a child
strapped into a booster.
It’s there. And, it’s theirs.
Crystal base. Beige shade.
They tingle with chemicals:
norepinephrine, phenylethylamine,
dopamine— the same blend
of neurotransmitters that fired
six years ago in the stretch
of their first extended kiss.
It’s not until miles later,
when normal levels return,
that they turn to each other.
She begins with the rumors
of child labor overseas,
while he explains how
places like that always bully
their way into towns
with promises of low prices,
and they’re both soon nodding
to the idea that all of this,
the unaccounted parting gift
of a sixty-five dollar lamp,
this rare olly olly oxen free,
is exactly what a store
like that deserves.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

Kate Sweeney

DEATH OF THE HIRED HAND, HIAWATHA, KANSAS

I loved his hands pulling that rattlesnake from the baler,
how the thing twitched slightly, as if shuddering in its sleep.

He fetched the shovel to grind off its head, that sick miracle
of jaw still opening and closing on the rusty spade.

I brought the body to grandmother who husked it and shaved off
the tender white kernels of tissue, curing enough meat

to feed one man. Its dried rattle is still a warning,
urging my memory to stay in the barn so I would not be the one

to find him writhing at the gate, gasping in a bloody-backed t-shirt,
while the bull in crimson-tipped horns looked on indifferently.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

Lee Stern

DETERMINING WHO THE MARCHERS WERE

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.
Only that when I grew tired of doing it,
nobody else volunteered to take my place.
As it was, the marchers recognized me even from a great distance
and applauded when they realized
that I was counting the people in each one of their lines.
It had been years since anyone had done this as rigorously as I had.
And their confidence in my counting them
left me at the same time actually content and fairly amazed.
I remember one line of ten men, when I said later that there were eleven of them,
smiled, and thought that it was a joke.
But, of course, it wasn’t a joke.
And the eleventh man, who claimed that he resembled me
even down to the color of my hair, when he put his tunic down,
lapsed into the kind of a coma I recognized
fitfully from months of pouring grease over my head
and years of placing birds in the sky.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009

Alan Soldofsky

EARLY NIGHT

In early December
           singing under the hedge
of verbena beside the porch.

What lies the sun tells
          of a few leaves stripped of their color,
parenthesis of rust on the hinges of the car door.

High wisps of clouds
          lit up by something
that has fallen.

The edge of a storm front
          faintly coming, a change in the smell
of the air, a quiver in the wind.

The incipient darkness, smooth as licorice.
          The only light in the house
the one in the closet that’s been left on.

The house quiet except for
          the gnawing in the attic.
The sound of a sound

that can barely hold the weight
          of being heard, a remnant
that ripples down the hallway

into the room where
          you slept. Your books still
dozing on the shelves waiting for you

to open them, or whatever
          it is you will do
when you get back to what you left.

–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009