Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      September 26, 2024August ThistleSonya Schneider

      Image: “Forage” by Tammy Nara. “August Thistle” was written by Sonya Schneider for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
      Now that their bodies hurt, they listen
      from their bedroom window
      to the goldfinch song—
       
      sweet repetition, it sounds
      like po-ta-to-chip with a very
      even cadence.
       
      Wild canaries, says Pa.
      They must be feeding
      on thistle seed, says Mom.
       
      My younger brother sleeps
      facing the wall, in the room
      across from them. Every night,
       
      they lift him to his bed, change
      his diaper, tuck the blue quilt
      with green squares
       
      around his fetal bend.
      After forty-two years, there is still
      that awkward moment
       
      when he wets their hands
      with his warm piss. He is music
      without words. Still, I ask—
       
      When will it be time
      to find him a different home?
      My father looks out across the dense
       
      thicket of invasive species:
      prickly-winged stems, bright
      purple flowerheads,
       
      releasing into the wind.
      We love the birds so much, Pa says.
      Wild canaries, Mom says.
       
      Their bristle-like spines shine
      in the moonlight. My brother
      sings in his sleep.
       

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the series editor, Megan O'Reilly

      “The thistle depicted in this image is bold, sharp, and undeniably beautiful, and in ‘August Thistle,’ we witness the sharp beauty of love as we watch an older couple care for a beloved adult child with disabilities while enduring the hardships of their own aging bodies and minds. I love the way the poet subtly connects the ‘sweet repetition’ of birdsong to the dailiness of caregiving tasks, and how much she reveals through the father’s response to the question of rehoming the child: ‘We love the birds so much.’ There is love in the way the poem speaks of this family, love in the parents’ devotion to their child, love in the way the couple admires the birds and the flowers, love and pain coexisting: ‘prickly-winged stems, bright / purple flowerheads.’”

      →