Author: Rattle

January 28, 2025

“Vultures in Hillsborough, NC” by Paul JonesPosted by

Paul Jones

VULTURES IN HILLSBOROUGH, NC

When they come, they bring the fearful dark,
like English majors looking for work,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red or black.
 
Now there is no empty tree. Stained bark’s
one sign they leave. They show no respect
when they come. They bring the fearful dark.
 
They praise flesh with a twist of their necks,
with their hiss from song-refusing beaks,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red or black.
 
Where they’ve been is easy to detect—
bones realigned by their secret sect.
When they come, they bring the fearful dark.
 
They keep it hid, or so I suspect,
deep in images that our minds connect—
feather-caped, bare-faced in red and black—
 
to murder, suicide, auto-wrecks.
They slip away like impatient clerks.
They come back bringing our winged fears—dark,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red and black.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Paul Jones: “I’ve seen this coming. We’re not talking about a few little black birds. The vultures kettle over the cops cars, over the town buildings, in and out of any dumpster within blocks. That said they deserve a villanelle for their efforts and for their effect on anyone who has to contend with them. Rather than tell the facts, the insistence of the birds, of the feelings they evoke, and their behavior became the business of the poem.” (web)

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January 27, 2025

“Hurt Bone” by Keetje KuipersPosted by

Keetje Kuipers

HURT BONE

When I tell the story of your return,
you are the supplicant and I
the forgiving queen. But in that year
before you blew back into my life
like a late spring snow—beautiful
and wrong and something I wasn’t sure
I still wanted to want—I had already
spent months pacing my small scrap
of floor trying to figure out if
I deserved to be loved. We both know
you gave my life back to me. Now
our daughter cuts open the neck
of the toy dinosaur with her doctor
scissors to see the hurt bone inside,
and when she finds it, she wipes
the pain away with the purple sock
that lost its mate in the laundry bin
last week. I tell our story with a laugh,
over a glass of wine—with the kind
of casual tilt to the head that belies
how much it pained us both—
then wipe the corner of my mouth
with a cocktail napkin. Everything
some kind of invisible loneliness
we dab at with a rag we didn’t
realize we’d kept just for that purpose.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Keetje Kuipers: “Sometimes a poem arrives in my mind quickly and nearly fully formed. That can be exciting, but it’s not necessarily as rewarding as those other times when a poem—like this one—has taken me years of quilting together saved images, actions, and moments before I arrive at a kind of shared meaning. Reading it now reminds me of the labor it takes not only to make a poem I love, but to make a life I love, too.” (web)

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January 26, 2025

“Praise the Broken Promise of America” by Alison LutermanPosted by

Alison Luterman

PRAISE THE BROKEN PROMISE OF AMERICA

Praise deep mineral veins under rich dirt,
and fossilized remains of dinosaurs turning themselves into gas
for our benefit. Praise the exhausted earth,
miles and miles of subsidized corn
and cattle lowing from their hell-holes
in automated milking barns.
Praise farmworkers rising before dawn,
their sore backs and aching knees. Praise the myths
that drew them here, stories eagerly consumed
when there is nothing to eat but faith.
Praise the courage of the reverend to look
the dragon in the eye and preach mercy;
praise whatever hidden waterways are still pristine.
Praise music that refused to play at the funeral of democracy.
and the killing cold that swept through Washington
when the fake Pope took power.
Praise drag queens and lipstick lesbians, boys who are girls
and girls who are lions, butch women wearing tool belts,
and all the music theater nerds
who are even now building new passageways
mapping the next underground railroad
and suiting up to be conductors—oh, everybody,
get on board! This train will chug quietly
across the great plains and over rocky Sierras,
into the desert where people still leave bottles of water
and packets of food for the desperate
who have always been the lifeblood
of this nation. It will stop in obscure hamlets
to pick up fugitives with tears tattooed on their cheeks
and fraying backpacks overspilling with contraband books.
Praise the weirdos because if anyone can save us
it will be us. And praise all the glittering illusions
we gawked at, ignoring our own neighbors
in favor of a 24-hour peep show on the internet.
Praise the convict fire fighters on the front lines in L.A.,
battling the insurmountable for ten dollars a day. We gambled
our future for a hot air balloon with a hole in it. Praise
our reckless hubris, and the infinite distractions
of the hall of mirrors we find ourselves in now, and bless
our overwhelmed brains, scurrying like mice for shelter.
Bless our collective rage, and protect
the officers who stood up on January 6th and now see their attackers
roaming the streets like rabid dogs, ah, bless the animals
we have always been, in our coats and shoes
and clumsy language, bless our willful ignorance,
so enormous, so world-altering, that, like the great wall of China,
it can be seen from outer space,
where the gods are shaking their heads even now,
in pity and in awe.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Alison Luterman: “The poem says it all. This past week has been heart-shredding. I’m not saying poetry can change anything right now, but it comforted me to write this, and I hope it offers comfort to anyone who reads it.” (web)

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January 25, 2025

“Parable of Displeasure” by Matt DennisonPosted by

Matt Dennison

PARABLE OF DISPLEASURE

He puked and he puked until he
thought now surely I must die, surely
there can be no more. He had brought
up the water, the coffee, the orange
juice, the whiskey, the wine, the
vodka, pasta, snails and love, but still
it kept coming. He was into the bodily
fluids now, and it would, later, scare
him. Now all he could do was watch.
And smell. Yellow, foul tasting stuff
that made him bite the back of his
tongue. Then green, then clear again.
Then brown. Then smudge, was all he
could call it, looking at the last grey
layer floating. Smudge. Yes. And
flat oil slicks, tiny fishes, nuts and
bolts, telephone line, cardboard boxes,
file cabinets, tax forms, old photos,
death announcements. Then, eyes
bulging, bursting red, gasping like a
gored fish, he passed it, or, rather, it
passed itself, wiggling out into the sick
grease on top of it all only to grow
and grow and grow until it, in turn,
puked him out, after the water, the
coffee, the orange juice, the whiskey, the wine,
the vodka, pasta, snails and love,
but still it kept coming.

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

_________

Matt Dennison: “At the age of four I found a small, white flower that had blue stripes on its petals. I told myself it was a blue-blooded bleeder and felt a sudden shock as when I had, in fact, stuck the fork in the outlet. Only this time the shock was the surge of power felt in the act of naming, of becoming ever-so-slightly larger, through words, than the event that moved us in the first place. Be it even of puking.”

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January 24, 2025

“Carrying Paul” by Ted KooserPosted by

Ted Kooser

CARRYING PAUL

We were instructed in how to carry the casket.
I was one of the three on the left, the one at the back.
On my shoulder sat my one-sixth of the weight
of Paul’s heavy brass-handled, mahogany casket,
my right hand palm up, pressed flat on the bottom.
 
We were told to cup our free hands on the shoulder
of the man just ahead, and to walk in step, left-right,
left-right. Paul would have said we looked vaguely
Egyptian, although not with their dusty clay colors,
for this frieze was all varnish and flowers, us six
in navy and black.
We knew without being told
to carry the casket from the hearse to the green tent
over uneven ground, stepping across other graves,
and our stumbles made Paul lift, tilt and fall
on our shoulders as if in a boat on a rolling sea,
sinking a little, then rising again, the six of us
overboard, clinging onto the casket, with Paul
spanking our hands with an oar, for that was
just like him, keeping it up until he’d been beached
on the canvas webbing stretched over the grave.
 
I felt weightless at once, my best shoes scarcely
touching the Astroturf carpet, as if I could lift off
and fly over once, then bank away into the sun,
but I was held there by the weight of Paul’s family,
his widowed mother, a sister, a brother, seated
on steel folding chairs on the edge of his part
of the next world, as the earth’s odor welled up
and over, and lapped at their ankles, then mine.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Ted Kooser: “For an 85-year-old person, I’ve only once been called upon to carry a casket, and my poem describes it as best I remember it, though it has been more than forty years past. Paul was a joker, a trickster, a Wile E. Coyote of a young man, who died in a head-on collision at high speed. Had he been able, he would have delighted in making our bearing him difficult, would have pulled at our fingers or spanked our hands. It was a relief to set him down on the stretched canvas webbing and step away.” (web)

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January 23, 2025

“The Grass Ceiling” by Kevin WestPosted by

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.

__________

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

__________

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

“The Afterlife” by Ron KoertgePosted by

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

__________

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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