January 23, 2025

Self-Portrait as a Prep School Llama by James Valvis, pastel drawing of a llama in a blue business suit

Image: “Self-Portrait as a Prep School Llama” by James Valvis. “The Grass Ceiling” was written by Kevin West for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

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Kevin West

THE GRASS CEILING

At his wildest Terry never dreamed
the journey from the Andes
to the corner window office
at Broadstone Bank outside Albany
 
was going to take so long,
the board’s closed-mindedness
looming like a chain of peaks
even as he kicked and spat
 
his way past the competition—
coddled milquetoast MBAs
with power ties and weak morals—
Broadstone’s balance sheets
 
rocketed up like a fuzzy tail,
all thanks to Terry’s wizardry
with risk management, his secret
weapons the swiveling ears
 
plucking whispers of futures
from the susurrus of stock tips,
every year bonuses doubled,
his supervisors shook their heads
 
in disbelief, and every year
Terry could hear the dry rattle
of the grass ceiling where his hopes
for promotion were dashed,
 
You’re too young, Terry,
Still missing some vital experience,
meanwhile Millie the bank manager’s
daughter shrieked in the break room
 
when her promotion was announced,
Terry’s ears fluttering sharply away.
Soon his studio overlooking the bend
in the Hudson started smelling like a stall,
 
Terry lost weight, developed mange,
worked himself wild with worry,
at all hours the halls of Broadstone
clacked with the beat of his two toes,
 
profits soared, and finally, finally!
Terry got the call: Next week,
dress well, you deserve it.
Down the street to the tailor
 
Terry waggled for a charcoal two-piece,
the new Amex, heavy with status,
rapping metallic against his toenails,
a black blade to slice through grass.
 
Until he paraded himself into
the boss’s office, Millie there, too,
all of them, faces aghast, eyes wide.
Is that mohair? somebody asked.
 
Terry paused, briefcase in hoof,
fought down the urge to spit,
I’m not an Angora goat, he said,
feeling the unseen grass above him,
 
still rough, dry, and harsh, no matter
his margins the board would only
notice his furry flanks, his dark eyes,
his ears pivoting toward the future.
 

from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, James Valvis: “I love the mixture of whimsy and woe in this poem. I’m especially impressed by the whimsy. Poets are often too serious. It’s a llama in a suit! It’s ridiculous. (Kind of like its artist.) What’s not ridiculous is the poet’s skill and tight wordplay. Kudos to the winner, and a hearty thanks to all the others that made the choice its own challenge.”

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January 22, 2025

Ron Koertge

THE AFTERLIFE

I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.
Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.
Love the game room and those herbal teas.
Everyone remembers Betty Grable.
 
Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.
Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased.
Everyone remembers Betty Grable.
Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.
 
Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased
tucked in among a thousand souvenirs.
Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.
Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.
 
Tucked in among a thousand souvenirs,
there’s room for clippings and my Betamax.
Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.
Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.
 
There’s room for clippings and my Betamax.
The past is present like a golden key.
Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.
I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.
 

from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

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Ron Koertge: “A while ago I read at a retirement center with some friends. Afterwards, someone mentioned the Faulkner quote: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ I wasn’t surprised when I got home, sat down and wrote the first draft of ‘The Afterlife.’”

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January 21, 2025

John Goode

HAPPINESS

He found it on the side of the road, blood
smeared across its fur like a strip of red flag.
And flies filled the air,
too many to count.
 
Back in the war, his wife used to make sense
of things like this
in long letters he held in his hands.
But she was gone
and the generals were gone too.
 
The sun was there with the flies
as it had been before,
and their metallic green bodies glowed
as they dove into the wreck, their tongues
like dreams their stomachs couldn’t wake.
 
The dog had been missing for days;
the man had no evidence
of its nostrils smoking like guns,
or its black pelt slick with the sweat
of a hunt.
 
He hadn’t seen the rabbit either,
skipping out over tall weeds,
four pounds of meat, hovering in the dog’s eyes
like happiness, but he knew
it had been there.
 

from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

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John Goode: “I was standing in the back of a pick-up truck unloading lumber for a construction site. The sun was blazing down and I was reciting Lorca’s poem ‘The Old Lizard’ under my breath. I knew then I would have to leave town and write my own poems.”

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January 20, 2025

Willie James King

THEY SING

The cicadas get one day to sing, mate
having lived seventeen-years underground
as grubs, that’s a long time for heaven’s sake,
too little for light or to fool around.
 
Who cares if others hate them when they sing
because their song is not lovely to hear
as if they’d be pleased just to have a fling
with one shot at sex while death waits so near.
 
Guess their song, to some, is like rakes on rocks
given the time they get to gasp and breed.
In twenty-twenty-four there’re two flocks
competing; they do not need time to feed.
 
It’s a wonder they’d care to sing at all,
at the rate they rise then suddenly fall.
 

from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

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Willie James King: “Mary Oliver’s American Primitive became my first writing teacher. Reading her poems taught me that it was okay to write about the things that really moved, that I cared about. Once I was bitten by the bug, although it started decades ago, I haven’t tired of it since.”

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January 19, 2025

Erin Murphy

INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVI

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. Some of my friends are trying Dry January. Dryuary. Others are sober curious. There’s a mock cocktail called a Phony Negroni. It’s made with non-alcoholic gin. Phony Negroni. Phony baloney. When I was eight, my brother and I were walking by a house in our neighborhood when suddenly a slab of baloney sailed through the air and stuck to a chain link fence. There were no people or animals in sight. Such a funny word, baloney. What’s Biden’s favorite saying? Malarkey. So hokey. But then, even the word hokey is hokey. Monday we’ll inaugurate a felon the same day we celebrate Martin Luther King. Felonious Trump. For years we’d pass the brick rancher and say There’s the baloney house the way you might observe that it’s raining or snowing. We humans can normalize anything.
 

from Poets Respond

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Erin Murphy: “The baloney house was a mid-century brick ranch that was nearly identical to my childhood home. I’ve wanted to write about it for years, and the upcoming inauguration finally gave me the opportunity.” (web)

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January 18, 2025

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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Mathias Nelson: “When I was little I used to act like a monkey, holding my mother’s hand and doing chimp talk. Things have changed, but I still act like an idiot in attempt to make her smile when I can.Sometimes it works, and, well, other times … she calls me a stupid sonof- a-bitch.” (web)

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January 17, 2025

Edmund Jorgensen

REGRETS

Regrets are pointless—
Which doesn’t mean
They don’t have an edge
That’s mortally keen—
 
That’ll halve your brain
And cleave your heart
And tease your days
And dreams apart—
 
Until at length
You play two roles,
Like water poured
To fill two holes—
 
And neither self
Quite stuffs your skin:
The almost-am
Or the might-have-been.
 

from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

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Edmund Jorgensen: “I write poetry because order is a protest against despair.”

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