Author: Rattle

June 27, 2024

“An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You” by Steven PanPosted by

Bird Ascending the Fire by Barbara Hageman Sarvis, painting in oranges and purples of a bird flying over a woodland lake

Image: “Bird Ascending the Fire” by Barbara Hageman Sarvis. “An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You” was written by Steven Pan for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

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Steven Pan

AN EARLY AUTUMN LIGHT THAT UNBURIES YOU

On earth, everything no longer
here is here in some variation
 
of light. An ice age
half-gone, all geography
 
shaved off youngest to oldest:
craters and lakes telling time
 
in reverse. Someday we’ll end
up there, you used to say,
 
pointing to the sun setting
over the strand. The season
 
and the leaves, starting
over again in a dream
 
with everything that lived
before this. Is it strange,
 
how a hurt that looked back
at you, looks like all of you
 
in the amber slowness
before evening. The detour
 
of your shadow
somewhere, casting a hook
 
over the water, perception
as imprecise as memory
 
or the autumn lingering
inside of it. Any year
 
straying no further
than the line of a robin’s
 
wings, the slight lean
of the trees that said life
 
held on. If I could call
you back, would this shore
 
be the one you’d wait on? How often
I mistake the sound of the wind
 
for the sound of your answer.
Your answer for a goodbye said
 
aloud. Goodbye for a matter
of time, or maybe a matter
 
of timing. Like a bird caught
mid-flight in the light
 
of the sky, brimming with everything
and nothing at once.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There are many aspects of ‘An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You’ that left an impression, from its smooth flow and musicality to its depth of meaning, but what stands out most, perhaps, is the way it’s peppered with gorgeous and brilliant turns of phrase–so many the effect could be overwhelming in the hands of a less adept poet. In the very same sentence, we find ‘The detour / of your shadow,’ ‘perception / as imprecise as memory’ (a stunningly insightful description), and ‘the autumn lingering / inside of it.’ One could read these lines many times and still be taken by the beauty and profundity of the poet’s language. When I first saw this image, I thought such a dramatic and striking piece of art would be challenging to match. I can’t imagine a better partner than this poem.”

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June 26, 2024

“The State of It” by M.P. CarverPosted by

M.P. Carver

THE STATE OF IT

The train 
cuts across 
the marsh. 
 
The fence 
cuts across 
the forest.
 
The bridge
cuts across
the river.
 
Our stone, steel, 
and electric bones 
grow and grow.  
 
Industriously, 
we rib 
the planet.
 
The rib cage 
protects 
the chest.  
 
The chest 
traps 
the heart.  
 
Our hearts 
beat and beat.
We know
 
that someday
they won’t, still
we can’t help 
 
but think 
that this, 
too, 
 
is something 
we can cut 
across.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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M.P. Carver: “I write because I’ve never found anything that sidles up closer to the ineffable than poetry. A beautiful failure.” (web)

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June 25, 2024

“Curves” by Karen BraucherPosted by

Karen Braucher

CURVES

That was the summer I fell asleep in German
 and woke up in French. I lay down on the earth,
  stared up through a three-dimensional labyrinth
   of dark branches stretching toward sky.
    Curves are so much more caressing than
     straight lines, n’est-ce pas? Who has time
      to look at parabolas? Could I express only
       a parade of diversionary questions? Nein, nein,
        the German inside demanded, Gib mir Antworten!
         I went to a party and tried only to ask questions
          and answer none. I was a spy, intimidating
         to at least two persons. Questions are curves,
        without closure. Could one spend a whole evening
       on a stroll through someone else’s mind? How
      refreshing to encounter unfamiliar corridors.
     No one is throwing up skeet and asking me
    to shoot. The parade massed and snapped
   to attention, goose-stepped away. Replaced by
  tendrils, drifting pine needles. When I awoke, I was
 la belle étrangère, omnipotent in my voluptuous
listening. I could coax even the waves to speak.

Notes:

Gib mir Antworten! means “Give me answers!”
la belle étrangère means “the beautiful stranger.”

—from Rattle #23, Spring 2005

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Karen Braucher: “Robert Frost once said that a poem should surprise the poet writing it. On Sept. 11th, 2001, I founded a poets’ collaborative that meets not to critique but to create new poems. We have tried smells, music, videos, writing exercises, you name it. Some surprising poems (including ‘Curves’) have come out of the collaborative and we’ll never forget our anniversary.” (web)

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June 24, 2024

“Ghazal (Fire)” by Stephen AllenPosted by

Stephen Allen

GHAZAL (FIRE)

When the beloved is present, presence lights a burning fire.
When the beloved is absent, memory sparks a yearning fire.
 
Swirls of summer dresses. Delicate beauty catches the eye.
Be more cautious of her scorn than Cupid returning fire.
 
Lust is easier to manage than purified love, sometimes.
Saint Francis flung his tempted body into a churning fire.
 
An education in nature starts with the basic elements:
learning earth and air, learning water, learning fire.
 
A tattered manuscript covered in something not quite leather.
Scattered fragments of an archaic treatise concerning fire.
 
Driving home at midnight, staggered lights on the northern horizon:
a rare Aurora Borealis, a wall of upturning fire.
 
Between this world and all it holds and the floating world of illusion
lie nothing more than shadows cast by the mind’s discerning fire. 
 
Whose vision of heaven do you want? What geometries?
The saints and angels circle, their paths an arc of turning fire.
 
And whose Hell is this? A space of silent loneliness.
Boredom much worse torture than tradition’s interning fire.
 
Face it, Stephen, the only fire in the belly you have is heartburn.
You should fall in love some time. Embrace the affirming fire.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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Stephen Allen: “Experimenting with forms is always fun for me, a chance to bring some order into my life. Writing ghazals, in particular, has been very satisfying: the jumps between couplets mirror the way my mind works, and the traditional subject matter of lost love is one I find very sympathetic at this point in my life.”

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June 23, 2024

“Advice to a Monolith” by Talley KayserPosted by

Talley Kayser

ADVICE TO A MONOLITH

To mirror the desert, you must wear away.
I learned this on a long walk, long ago.
 
My skin went dark past bronze. My hair grew dust.
Sun washed my clothes into rock-colored gauze.
 
When only the wet of my eyes and mouth
could reveal me—suddenly bighorn
 
bimbled cliffs. Suddenly lions
eased among the creosote. I learned
 
to be gentler when shaking scorpions
from my boots. To mirror this desert
 
you need an edge you trust
to crumble, need to feel
 
each blooded life surviving desert
as your kindred. Desert will pit you
 
against winds you cannot withstand
by standing. Desert will topple all your light
 
with greater light. Desert will swallow
whole your pilgrims. Look how alien
 
you are—I say your glare
is no protection and less art. I say
 
desert (fiercer art)
will not abide reflection.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Talley Kayser: “The mysterious metal monoliths appearing in remote locations around the world—including, this past week, in my home desert—are easy to read as wry, sci-fi inflected jokes. This is especially true of the current monolith (illegally) installed near Gass Peak, Nevada. Its hyper-shiny surface reflects the desert at odd angles; the color palette matches, but the lines don’t. It looks, at a strangely visceral level, like a glitch. I’m always disappointed by how common it is for artists in this region to use highly reflective surfaces (think Airstream trailer) as sculptural material. I imagine the impulse is grounded in an appreciative tension: the reflection echoes the vastness of the desert landscape, while the smooth texture provides a sharp contrast to the desert’s natural materials. But as someone who has spent a great deal of time walking the Mojave desert, I chafe at how this strategy flirts with cultural narratives that write desert as only space: as empty, as wasteland, even as ‘unearthly.’ It seems that art about the Mojave rarely engages with its aliveness and intimacy—with how the extreme conditions here shape every living thing, including the rocks, into specialized beings worthy of attention and awe. In Nevada, the story of desert-as-empty has real impacts; it’s why Nevada was repeatedly bombed with nuclear weapons, why Nevada only narrowly staved off becoming the nation’s nuclear waste dump, and why large-scale lithium mining is being greenlighted in Nevada despite strong objections about its environmental consequences. I know the desert-as-empty story will also empower interested parties to seek out this new monolith with relatively literal regard for the desert itself; a similar installation in Utah attracted would-be admirers in hordes, most of whom had no problem driving their vehicles through protected areas and leaving their (literal) shit wherever they liked on their quest to find the Big Shiny Thing. Into this cluster of associations, I wrote ‘Advice to a Monolith.’ It’s a poem about minding your manners in a place with every capacity to eat you alive. I wonder, if it were left to stand, how long the surface of this monolith would stay mirror-bright. On its own time, I know the desert always wins.” (web)

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June 22, 2024

“Three Haiku” by Helen BuckinghamPosted by

Helen Buckingham

THREE HAIKU

 

 

returning home
a builder’s crane
gives me the finger

 

 

 

high art
one kid
draws a gun

 

 

 

winking
in the midday sun—
a whale of a yacht

—from Rattle #47, Spring 2015
Tribute to Japanese Forms

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Helen Buckingham: “The reading and writing of Japanese style short-form poetry is my grounding mechanism, be that ground high or low, urban or rural, external or internal. The poems included here were written while living in Bristol and in the past six months since moving to Wells, in the heart of the Somerset countryside, though in many instances their gestation can be traced to my South London childhood. I only wish I’d had access to haiku and its associated forms back then.”

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June 21, 2024

“The Things We Forget” by Jana BoumaPosted by

Jana Bouma

THE THINGS WE FORGET

My dentist warns that my gums are letting go; they’re
threatening to set my teeth adrift on a current of words.
So I’ve bought myself an electric toothbrush, 
and my teeth, now, after brushing them 
are so clean that they are a wonder, 
and every day I trace them with my tongue, 
relishing their smoothness. And when I spit into the sink 
and turn on the faucet, all that roughness 
goes spiraling down the drain, through the pipes, 
into that long, tentacled river flowing continuously 
beneath our feet, carrying away all that we do not want 
to think about or see again, 
uniting stream with stream of effluent from my kitchen, 
my bathroom, the neighbor’s kitchen, and bathroom, 
every kitchen and bathroom in my small town, 
in the neighboring city, in a thousand cities 
across a continent. 
 
Away it all goes but leaves behind trace after trace 
in the pipes-become-channels-become-
subways that men can walk within and do 
walk within, looking for the leaks and the corrosion 
and the clogs that would flood a city street 
or back up into your basement if there were not 
someone         willing         to disappear 
into the street’s round, dark openings, 
to descend into a chamber knee-deep 
 
with the excrement and the sluice that we’ve all 
tried to forget, that we all have forgotten 
as soon as it leaves our sink or bathtub, and Mike Rowe 
has made a television series, an entire career 
out of the work that such men do (and such women),
unclogging the sewers, digging a river’s worth of silt 
from inside the dam, shovelful by shovelful,
stripping the feathers from bird carcasses,
carrying away the excrement of enormous animals, 
because hard work 
                                   is beautiful 
no matter the muck that you do it in, 
and the men and women who do it are, yes,
                                                                             beautiful, 
the women with fingers raw from turning seams in the coat factory, 
the men with faces blackened by the forge’s fire, 
the husband and wife toiling, bent over the long rows of strawberries, 
their infant bundled under a tree at the field’s edge, their ears listening 
for the sound of approaching sirens. 
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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Jana Bouma: “I love that poetry brings to our awareness the things and the people that we seldom think about, or that we actively avoid thinking about. For years, I tried to write this poem with that very intent until, one day, a visit to the dentist’s office provided me with that one ‘other thing’ that made the poem work, and the poem came pouring out.”

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