Author: Rattle

September 4, 2024

“Being Trans” by Francisco Castro VidelaPosted by

Francisco Castro Videla

BEING TRANS

the lady asked me what it meant
and for some reason i told her we were refugees from Transnitria
a small republic surrounded by very large and powerful states
a republic so small that it can only be spotted on a map with a magnifying glass
that sometimes we weren’t even on the map
that there was a debate about our recognition in many parliaments and organizations
that no one really wanted us
that we were an uncomfortable thing
that our borders were always in dispute
that we were an unresolved issue
that every day someone questioned our status and threw words at us like de facto and juridical and special
that no one would accept our currency
that everyone was suspicious of our passports
that we had no rights
that many of us were killed
that in spite of that we felt as part of a community
that although it’s true we sometimes fought with each other
we had a common tongue
we yearned for the same horizons
we grew by the same rivers and mountains
we were raised under the same harassment and the same difficulties and the same lack
that although all we knew was displacement and rejection we would always sing about our home
that all we wanted was what was best for our people
that our anthem talked about pride and happiness and love and fortitude and peace
that our emblem was a rising sun because our fight was for a future filled with light
anyway
i said that’s what being trans meant
she said that it was both very sad and very beautiful
i said yes
it was
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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Francisco Castro Videla: “There is not much to be said, the reason for my writing (I think) necessarily eludes me—but I can only state that words such as ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied’ (Matthew 5:6) and ‘Verily, God does not look at your shapes or wealth, but he looks at your hearts and actions’ (Muslim, Book 45, Hadith 42) should never be taken lightly.”

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September 3, 2024

“The Hour of Our Belief” by Mary Mclaughlin SlechtaPosted by

Mary McLaughlin Slechta

THE HOUR OF OUR BELIEF

I want to know who cried for the toy I found out back this afternoon.
Was it the same child who ate a sandwich made from the bread
out of the plastic bag I found last week? So difficult to date plastic.
The toy gas pump promises five cents a gallon.
That would make a dollar’s worth about a tank.
Maybe 1960. Maybe a politician now. Small world.
Someone who keeps voting for war to save our way of life.
The Onondagas want the land returned to their stewardship.
They want the lake cleaned properly.
They want everything back the way it was
before that odious Simon LeMoyne grabbed all the salt
for his three-minute egg. Before his flock fouled the water.
I want everything put back. The toy put back in the boy’s pocket
and the boy’s father back on a ship beside his parents.
I want the ship setting a reverse course for the shores of Europe.
Before they arrive I want Hitler back in his mother’s womb
and the reset stone in her garden wall
back in the path of her thin-soled slipper.
The passengers will insist on sandwiches, I suppose,
lovely little sandwiches wrapped in paper.
If they trim the bread, let them leave the crusts behind
to feed the birds a lavish supper. Then let the birds go back
to eating whatever it is they did before McDonald’s.
I’ll go back too, a circuitous route by wagon first,
returning my skillet to the forge, my rolling pin to the forest,
discharging my nose and hair like a Halloween mask,
my skin like a suit of mail: a withered champion,
at last, more onion and potato than flesh and bone,
ascending the bow of a ship from the cool dry cellar of my soul.
Oh, amazing grace! To cross the dangerous shoals
where the bones sing home all the ships at sea.
Let the women swallow back air they churned to storm.
Let them refill the lungs of children
they pull from waves and wrest their husbands
from the teeth of sharks. In the restored calm,
let memory whet my tongue
for the anchor of my mother’s food.
On shore, my father waits.
His hands are empty with missing me.
Let the glint at his feet in the sand
be only the sun, chasing the tail
of a golden worm.

—from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
Tribute to African American Poets

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Mary Mclaughlin Slechta: “As I restored the soil of my city garden, each token of former human activity became a little mystery. I also thought a lot about the much abused Onondaga Lake we can almost see from the back window and the Onondaga land claim that embraces the lake as well as this poorly treated land. This poem is dedicated to all of us moved and removed, but mostly to the long, juicy worms that have wiggled back from who knows where.”

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September 2, 2024

“Ghazal: Of Prayer” by Chiwenite OnyekweluPosted by

Chiwenite Onyekwelu

GHAZAL: OF PRAYER

While her organs wrecked, she had a mouth full
of prayer.
It was stage IV & I didn’t understand the logic.
How, of prayer,
 
Of the softness between God’s hands, cancer
could slip in unnoticed.
Like the Diocletian Persecutors, burning books
of prayer.
 
You have to keep your body open: The first
rule of prayer
is also the last. I saw her begin chemotherapy.
An act of prayer
 
Or maybe strength. As the persecutors burned
books of prayer,
historians say, they burnt the believers as well.
To deprive of prayer
 
Is to walk headfirst into light, to walk until you
become your own
jeweled God. It was Saddiq Dzukogi who—
in a dirge of prayer—
 
Wrote, Questions lead you out of blasphemy
not into it.
O cherub of metastasizing cells. Patron Saint
of prayer
 
Rams. Did you listen as she grappled her beads
of prayer,
or did you panic—a celestial retreating at the
latch of prayer.
 
It infected one lymph node & then the next. Each
spread as exact.
Until she moved from grief to glitter, from groan
to humming songs of prayer.
 
Death draws you towards surrender or away from it.
Sleek mouth of prayer,
of humor & those bedside jokes. As if she knew her
days of prayer
 
Were ending, & she held on to what was left after all.
Made a mockery of her pain
knowing she’d never hurt again. As if to say, I’m out
I’m out, I’m out of prayer.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal

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Chiwenite Onyekwelu: “I always loved reading ghazals, even though I had never written one. I loved that, somehow, ghazal poems seem to point the reader towards a particular word or words—thereby willing them to pay attention and remain in the present. This poem is my first-ever ghazal. I wrote it after one of my clinical rounds in the cancer ward as a pharmacy undergraduate. I saw a woman push back pain and fear and death, and when I came home, I knew I had to write this poem.” (web)

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September 1, 2024

“That’s My Dad” by D.A. GrayPosted by

D.A. Gray

“THAT’S MY DAD”

for Gus

Ours was often a wordless language,
Whole conversations shared in the space
Between the hook flying from the rod,
To the splashdown in the water,
And in the waiting for the pull from some
Invisible place beneath the surface, or
Maybe the realization it wouldn’t happen.
 
Not always deep—sometimes anger tore
Through the mind like the hook’s barb;
Other times gratitude slapped one awake.
 
Or, like now, resting my hand on the glassy
Arm of an old rocking chair he’d worked
Nights sanding and smoothing,
Caning and coating,
And when this heirloom was passed down,
My few words, “I’ll take care of it”
Were all that broke the surface.
 
That memory shook me watching a father on stage,
Talking tirelessly of building a team,
The hands of the son pointing, shaking,
In the audience sobbing, three words pushing
Past the hard glass surface of men,
A whole universe on the other side.
 

—from Poets Respond

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D.A. Gray: “Gus Walz’s outpouring of emotion during his father’s speech at the DNC convention touched a lot of hearts but it also caused many adults to reflect on the repressed emotions in their own experience, and to see a stark contrast in the choices facing us—fearless caring, or a culture of fear shaped by toxic masculinity.”

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August 31, 2024

“Tree Man” by Asher JarmulPosted by

Asher Jarmul (age 3)

TREE MAN

A big bush called to a tree man: Hey tree,
what are you doing up there? Are you just
doing a dance move? Are you just doing the
ABCs, like the letters? I don’t know what
you’re doing.
 
If you’re a human, just come down and
think about it. You can take a breath. And
don’t let any monsters cause you trouble.
 

—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

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Why do you like to write poetry?

Asher Jarmul: “Because I like to listen to the poems after my mom records them.”

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August 30, 2024

“Waiting” by J.R. SolonchePosted by

J.R. Solonche

WAITING

My daughter is with me in the car.
She does not wait for anything.
She sleeps.
 
Sleeping may be waiting to wake up.
But I do not think it is.
I think it is something else entirely.
 
The clouds fill the plate glass window
of the store my wife has gone into.
There they share the sky
 
with teakwood bowls and brass candlesticks,
with rattan chairs and dried flowers
that look like tennis balls
 
sliced in half and painted impossible green,
with soapstone lion paperweights and
vases of colorless colors and shapeless shapes.
 
How serene they are as they float
in their twin heavens, in front of and above me,
these ghosts of the ships that we have
 
waited for all our lives but have never come in,
these blissful hosts for whom waiting
is the end-in-itself, O blessed end without end.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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J.R. Solonche: “Why do I write poetry? I can do no better than to quote the poet Art Beck: ‘Since You Asked Why’: ‘Poets are children until they die / and wine brings Christmas every night.’ The $200 shall bring many Christmas nights.”

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August 29, 2024

Haiku [call to prayer] by Almila DükelPosted by

Black and white photo of men and women crossing a temple courtyard, the woman in a burka, the men's faces blurred with dots

Image: “Lahore #44” by Faizan Adil. The haiku was written by Almila Dükel for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

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Almila Dükel

HAIKU

 
 
call to prayer
our faces hidden
from ourselves
 
 
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Moving beyond simple description, the best ekphrastic poems expand on their source material, often by imagining new narratives or pointing out small details that alter our perception of the piece. This haiku does something more unusual. In hyper-focusing its few words on the overall theme, the poem acts like a lens directing all of the scene’s energy onto a single point so intensely that it feels like we just might ignite.”

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