January 14, 2025

“Poem in Which I Press Fast Forward” by Denise DuhamelPosted by

Denise Duhamel

POEM IN WHICH I PRESS FAST FORWARD

my young mother becomes my dead mother
my new car becomes a clunker
 
my blond hair becomes gray,
my favorite sweater, a rag
 
my beloved becomes my enemy
my enemy, someone I can’t remember
 
my past becomes a murky place except for a few sharp excerpts
my memory, a torn plastic bag, groceries spilling onto the pavement
 
my love of apples becomes a metaphor
my love of apples becomes my love of applesauce
 
my flat chest becomes a set of breasts that later flop
my bright pink scar becomes a faded white line
 
my childhood friend becomes a stranger, then a corpse
my childhood home becomes someone else’s home
 
my baby fat becomes adult fat
my new sneakers, worn and ready for Goodwill
 
my obsessions become ash
my fire, a cold sandwich
 
my scribbles becomes more scribbles
my wedding dress, a punchline
 
my glass of wine becomes my rewind
my beer stein, a pencil cup
 
my garbage becomes landfill
your trees, my kitchen table
 
my biggest problems dissolve
then bubble up years later like Alka-Seltzer
 
my belly laugh becomes a bellyache
my aversion to conflict becomes a migraine
 
my frown becomes a ray of frown lines
my dance moves becomes a skeleton rolled into an anatomy classroom
 
my childhood love of the sea becomes my adult political quest
my pet peeves soften into petty concerns then become peace lilies
 
my fall from grace becomes my saving
my savings become my coffin’s down payment
 

—from In Which
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Denise Duhamel: “I started writing the poems from In Which after reading Emily Carr’s brilliant essay ‘Another World Is Not Only Possible, She Is on Her Way on a Quiet Day I Can Hear Her Breathing.’ (American Poetry Review, Volume 51, No. 3, May/June 2022) Carr borrows her title from Arundhati Roy, political activist and novelist. In her delightfully unconventional essay, Carr talks about rekindling intuition in poems, offering ‘a welcome antidote to whatever personal hell you, too, are in.’ Carr’s invitation to be unapologetic, even impolite, gave me new ways of entering my narratives. Soon I was imagining I was someone else completely. Or sometimes I looked back at my earlier self, at someone I no longer recognized.”

Rattle Logo

January 13, 2025

“Family Vacation” by Terri Kirby EricksonPosted by

Terri Kirby Erickson

FAMILY VACATION

Long Beach, NC, 1965

My father in his red bathing trunks and bare feet,
his back glistening with suntan lotion liberally
applied by my mother, was not the same man who
came home tired from sitting at a desk all day
when what he wanted to do was move. Slim and wiry,
he lived inside his lithe body like ball lightning
ricocheting around a locked room. He looked forward
all year to summer vacation—loved running over
the hard-packed sand with its shards of shell, its swirls
of seaweed—and diving headfirst into the waves. He told
us once that his father couldn’t swim, but was built
so heavy and solid, he could crawl on the ocean floor
like a giant lobster, holding his breath as long as a pearl
diver. But Dad was a torpedo in the water, head down,
arms churning—swimming so far out to sea, my brother
and I were afraid he’d never come back. So when he
turned at last and headed for the beach, we sank
to our knees with relief, waving as if he could see
us, as if we were little lighthouses guiding
our father to a safe and sandy shore.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Terri Kirby Erickson: “I cannot count the number of times that writing poetry has saved my life, which is not surprising since I have the mathematical ability of a howler monkey. It has helped (and continues to help) me deal with the loss of my entire nuclear family, my husband’s cancer diagnosis, our daughter’s MS, and a movement disorder (among other health challenges) that seriously impeded my ability to do anything before being prescribed the right medication. I’m not complaining, however, because life is tough for most people—and lucky me, I have a million stories to tell, a sense of humor, and gallons of love going out and coming in.” (web)

Rattle Logo

January 12, 2025

“LA Is Burning, Countries Are at War, and I Am So Damn Grateful for My Shower” by Rose LennardPosted by

Rose Lennard

LA IS BURNING, COUNTRIES ARE AT WAR, AND I AM SO DAMN GRATEFUL FOR MY SHOWER

And god said, Let there be showers!—
and water fell on the bowed heads and shoulders
of people throughout the land, and sluiced
over breasts and bellies and buttocks,
coursed down limbs and fingers and toes;
and the water ran hallowed and hot on cold days,
and blessedly cool in Summer’s heat, it rinsed sleep
from just-awoken eyes, washed mud and sweat
off tingling skin, it mingled with piss
and tears and bodily fluids, gulped shit,
unwelcome hair, the tiny invisible eggs
of parasites. The people dripped and shone.
They took showers when they ached,
to wake up or wind down, or when
they were lonely and longed to be touched.
They fucked and screamed in long steamy showers,
and babies were conceived as windows fogged
and walls streamed and blossomed with mould.
And the water ran and ran and ran,
it obeyed the rules of water: to find
its own level, to dissolve, carry, deposit.
It took our chemicals and waste, and lo,
it whisked them to a place the people
called away. And maybe god also said, let there be
sewage farms, and factories to turn out boilers
and pipes and flanged rubber seals,
and nodding donkeys sucking oil out
of desert sands, and let there be plumbers
and designers and people packing marble tesserae
into crates, and yes, let there be politicians
telling us we have a god-given right
to use as much of this goddamn planet
as our squeaky-clean fingers can grip;
and did god say, let there be firefighters with freshly-
bathed children sleeping in beds, let them hose
god-given water over the smouldering roofs
of mansions nestled in droughted hills,
let them risk their lives putting out blazes
round the blue-tiled pools of celebrities?
 
Let the water run off asphalt and concrete,
let it run to the ocean to try to forget
all it has seen and all it has swallowed,
let it return to the fish and the turtles
and the immense forgiveness of whales, let it cry—
My god, why have you forsaken me?
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Rose Lennard: “Sometimes I marvel at the luxury that is a shower, a glory that is often taken for granted. I’m not religious, but nevertheless steeped in the language of Christianity when it comes to gratitude and wonder. But if we believe that god made the good things, what can we say about the bad? Robin Wall Kimmerer (in Braiding Sweetgrass) tells of the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee people, which says ‘We are grateful that the waters are still here and doing their duty of sustaining life on Mother Earth’. Water has been given such heavy duties, and modern life means we cannot help but abuse water every day with our wastage and pollution.”

Rattle Logo

January 11, 2025

“The Power of Light” by Ken LetkoPosted by

Ken Letko

THE POWER OF LIGHT

can turn a white
dog black
a silhouette
 
on the horizon
sunlight unfolds
every new leaf
 
pulls a sumac
sprout through
four inches of asphalt
 
a red light stops a chain
of fast-moving cars
at an intersection
 
light you spend
all day every day
at the end of the tunnel
 
nine missing miners
on the windowsill
nine candles
 
widow’s walk
a lantern for
a late boat
 
the moon
is your proxy
interrogating
 
the night sky
you can make
mud shine
 
any student
of the stars
knows the sky
 
can be any color
 

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

__________

Ken Letko: “I was walking on some bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean when I noticed a large black dog on the horizon. The off-leash animal was coming toward me on the same trail. When we met, I realized the friendly, smiling creature was nearly pure white because he was no longer walking in his own shadow! I had witnessed ‘the power of light.’ I just had to write about that.”

Rattle Logo

January 10, 2025

“Hallelujah” by Lenny DellaRoccaPosted by

Lenny DellaRocca

HALLELUJAH

Jesus healed somebody in her church, she said.
The woman had been
wheel-chaired since forever
and a group of friends
surrounded her
and prayed real hard.
They raised their hands
the way I’ve seen
on TV, waving them
east to west like
they were trying
to get a better signal.
Their eyes closed,
looking like any minute
Jesus himself
would come down
on a bolt of lightning.
The lady in the wheelchair smiled, raised her hands, too.
After they hollered
and yelled Praise God
several times, the cripple
stood up. Her friends
whooped and shouted
and danced. She’s healed,
one of them shouted.
But when the lady
sat back down in her
chair her friends acted
like it was no big deal
that she still could
not walk. I asked my
devout friend about that.
She said it was the will
of Jesus, and nobody knows
his plan. I said
it sounds like a lot of crap, and she unfriended me.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Lenny DellaRocca: “This poem is an Epoem, a form I’ve invented. If you’re interested to know what an Epoem is go to soflopojo.com and click the Witchery link. Witchery is a poetry journal embedded there. ‘Hallelujah’ came about after talking with a coworker who told me Jesus healed someone at her church. The poem is also informed by when I was an usher at a theater that brought in an evangelist a few times a year. The pastor ‘healed’ many folks there, but none of those in wheelchairs sitting right in front of the stage. He was a fraud.”

Rattle Logo

January 9, 2025

“Injustice” by Jared CampbellPosted by

Jared Campbell

INJUSTICE

The beautifullest bird’s the pigeon,
but “pigeon” doesn’t rhyme with “love,”
so poems praising love, religion,
or nature all ignore the pigeon.
Their iridescence doesn’t get a smidgen
of the honor granted to the dove.
The beautifullest bird’s the pigeon.
But “pigeon” doesn’t rhyme with “love.”
 

—from Prompt Poem of the Month
December 2024

__________

Prompt: Write a tiolet that features a bird.

Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “As a regular reader on our weekly Rattlecast Prompt Lines, Jared frequently shares his contrarian takes on the world—which fly with particular grace in this poem. With the wingspan of the eight lines in a triolet, he crafts an extended metaphor on the wind of a perfect title. The humor of ‘beautifullest’ shakes our tail feathers, and we may never look at a pigeon the same way again.”

Rattle Logo

January 8, 2025

“French Omelet” by Jim DanielsPosted by

Jim Daniels

FRENCH OMELET

When my parents came to France to visit
they got on the wrong train. We lived
in the middle of nowhere, too small
for their map. We retrieved them
 
at another station and drove to our small
house surrounded by someone else’s
grape vines. My father, retired from Ford
in Detroit, could not believe how narrow
 
the roads were—unmarked paths,
two-way traffic on one lane, requiring
small gestures of deference. On leave,
I had a small break from marking
 
papers. My mother had raised five kids
and nursed her tiny mother till she died.
All she wanted was a French omelet.
Out of season, the small restaurants
 
nearby were closed. I myself did not know
what made an omelet French. We grew
up with scrambled eggs on special
occasions and hard-boiled at Easter.
 
My two small children liked sweet brioche
toasted for breakfast in our dark, stony kitchen.
My mother read them bedtime stories.
My father built fires in the fireplace.
 
We were all in some version of heaven
though my mother already relied
on a cane and wore tinted glasses
on the narrowing road to a wheelchair
 
and blindness. She got her omelet
in a roadside café one sunny February
afternoon warm enough to sit out
on the tiny terrace. She refused to be
 
disappointed with their small, modest
lives, their ordinary children.
She was in France! Eating an omelet!
So light she had to keep it from floating
 
away with her fork. Just the five
of us in the café. My father
could relax now that she had
her omelet.
 
We squinted into the sun
with all the time in the world
as the clocks briefly paused
to grant her that small wish.
 
I keep saying small even as it grows
in memory, looming down
from the distant sky
years after her passing.
 
I can see that full yellow plate
in front of her. She ate it
for the rest of her life.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Jim Daniels: “I had a speech defect for many years, and I found solace in expressing myself on paper. A teacher in high school changed my life when he told me I was writing poems. Despite or because of the many other defects I have accumulated since then, I continue to write.”

Rattle Logo