Author: Rattle

June 19, 2024

“Ghazal—” by S. A.Posted by

S. A.

GHAZAL—

The wine-dark pain spills over, in my bed alone.
In nighttime stillness is my heart beset alone.
 
Why did you make me this way, why did you make me?
O God, why did you make the world, thus left alone?
 
My lone soul that aches for others’ nearness,
Why not make me like you, and be glad alone?
 
My forebears made us for company in sorrow.
You, motherless, childless, cannot beget, alone.
 
Why was I born from another’s pain? A mother’s
body, carried me—but suffered and bled alone.
 
To what do I owe the tormenting of this heart,
A solitary drum that beats “not-dead,” alone.
 
What do I owe you, thus born into this sorrow,
Are we all bound to you in debt, alone?
 
I was anointed “shame” ere having seen the light.
Why give me to the world, naked, blood-clad, alone?
 
Why must we plod and sweat and toil to till the earth?
Answer me, Lord; we cannot live from bread alone.
 
We were abandoned, then commanded to find you.
Why send us prophets to die in your stead, alone?
 
I’ll renounce you too, God, unveiled, unfettered, I
sing, birdlike, free, and leave my prayers unsaid, alone.
 
I trace my finger ’round the mirror Pleiades.
Around me Time winds its unending thread, alone.
 

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

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S. A.: “As a multilingual poet growing up speaking Arabic, I’ve always been fascinated by classical Arabic poetry, and how these poems and poetic forms can be read, appreciated, contrasted, reworked, reflected, and reimagined. I wanted to see if the ghazal form could work as well in English as it would with the mellifluous, dense imagery of the Arabic language. I wanted to evoke many of the same images, phrases, and ideas that show up in ancient Arabic, Persian, and Urdu ghazals, and this decidedly heretical ghazal is still grappling with the same themes of love, loss, and god.”

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June 18, 2024

“To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

TO A SELF-PROCLAIMED MANIC DEPRESSIVE EX-STRIPPER POET, AFTER A READING

Remember: you are a blank page
no amount of shopping can cure.
One night you go out in tassels
and the next like a nun, but we still
love you. Can’t hold your liquor?
Never mind. Little angel, little bomb-thrower—
where would our malls
be without you? And the readings
you give in your corset are always good
for a crowd. I didn’t stop to give you
any advice. Get moving, screams Self
Magazine, or get medicated. Stay in the sun.
One more roast beef sandwich to watch you
wear yourself out for the muse. In the mirror,
you continue to shrink and I tell you—
eat this piece of cherry pie. It’s laced with cinnamon,
and maybe lithium. Also, write, but remember
writing will not be the death of you, or the life.
Keep watching the skies. Or skis. Sign a happy tune.
If this world doesn’t know the magic they behold,
create it for them. Remember to paint over the lines.
Forget your high heels and dance, Cinderella, dance.
 

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005

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Jeannine Hall Gailey: “Since memorizing ‘Anyone Lives in a Pretty How Town’ for a fifth-grade poetry recitation contest, I’ve been in the thrall of language and the elegance of this art form. I’m still working on writing something worthy of memorization by a future fifth grader.” (web)

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June 17, 2024

“Wayfare” by John ArthurPosted by

John Arthur

WAYFARE

I spent most of a day 
putting the crib that came 
in 48 parts together, tightening 
every screw just enough, 
but not too much, the memory 
of its assembly living somewhere 
in me while you dreamt inside it 
for one thousand nights,
it later taking only ten minutes
to disassemble and one minute
more to box it up, to put it out 
onto the curb where the city 
came to take it away. 
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

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John Arthur: “I’ve always been perplexed by poetry. I read and write it to make some sense of the confusion. My favorite poems surprise me and help me understand what I feel with more clarity. I don’t fully understand why I am drawn to poetry, but I am glad that I am, always have been, and likely always will be.”

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June 16, 2024

“My Father” by Terri Kirby EricksonPosted by

Terri Kirby Erickson

MY FATHER

My father was a whistler and a penny
lobber. He had no use for the lowest
denomination of hard money, so handing
pennies to him for change was followed
by a quick coin toss to the sidewalk. Dad’s
one-cent pieces are all over this town,
including the pockets and piggy banks
of strangers, something he never met.
He could talk to anybody and they talked
to him. While paying for paint or car
parts or anything at all, cashiers would
tell my dad the stories of their lives and
he would listen. Once my ex-husband,
who my father later referred to as a bad
penny, was yelling at me because supper
wasn’t hot on the table when he came
home from work. He didn’t know that
Dad was upstairs until he came bounding
down saying, Boy, if you’re so hungry, why
don’t you eat a goddam cracker? which
was one of the most satisfying moments
of my entire life, and still worth a whistle.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Terri Kirby Erickson: “Thanks for everything, Dad. I miss you every day.” (web)

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June 15, 2024

“What Is Your Idle Job?” by Ace BoggessPosted by

Ace Boggess

“WHAT IS YOUR IDLE JOB?”

—question (with typo) in a mass email’s subject line

I wait for lunchtime at my desk, spinning
like a boy in a barber’s chair. Come noon, a walk
past pretty girls in flowered clothing, faces blooming
from sunlight’s brownish blush. I sit awhile,
lotus-like beneath a shadowy willow, breathe smells
of cut grass, melting chocolate.
I feed squirrels, sing love songs to pigeons,
watching as they bob their heads in rhythm.
Then it’s back to the office for coffee
tasting like gasoline, maybe a doughnut on the sly.
If my boss pops over, checking my progress,
I greet him with a good-natured pat on the back
to wipe the sticky glaze from my fingertips. After,
it’s time for all the important tasks: I shuffle
blank pages, transfer calls to disconnected numbers.
I wink at my window-reflection. I liaise. Mostly,
I deal with people come looking for me.
I give directions, always surprised if they reappear,
winded & flushed, to ask me where I am.

—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets

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Ace Boggess: “I just like watching things, from at a distance at first and eventually from the center of the scene. I started writing as a way to take photographs of the things I was watching and, later, living. I began with songs as a fun way to take those photos, then moved on to my real love, novels. I picked up the bad habit of writing poems when I finally realized writing novels takes so long that too many important photos never get taken along the way.” (web)

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June 14, 2024

“Anniversary” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

ANNIVERSARY

for Alex Dimitrov

I was crying in front of the Quick Trip
because I was out of cigarettes

and left my wallet at home and
it was my anniversary and so it was

New Year’s Eve, and already too much
had gone wrong for me too often

to feel conspicuous about it,
crying, I mean, since it is the end

of articulate speech and why
one leaves most crying men alone.

I didn’t look up from my hands
for almost an hour, and when I did,

my eyes two fish-eyed lenses, I saw
the blurred moon and another man

crying, filling up his car, looking at me.
“I’m crying because you are,” he whispered

loudly over. “I’m also crying because
maybe it means one of us must stop soon.”

—from Rattle #47, Spring 2015

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Erik Campbell: “I read and write poetry to remind myself that I have a soul that needs a periodic tune-up.” (web)

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June 13, 2024

“Saving For Sleep” by Hannah CraigPosted by

Hannah Craig

SAVING FOR SLEEP

Night’s pitch-rolled on a deck of blight,
and hands, they call, all hands aboard.
Here’s the rigging of a dream—
you, and you, and a naked girl
before a throne of apples, gardens. A sway
in the sail—here we are, the boat
of my room, the belly, the bone stern
and prow. These gulls above me, heading south.

Oysters play cuckold to the beams,
pitch fostered to every knot and seam. The give-out-give-in
of cider press, the bellows honking incessantly.
Listen, I will make you a fisher
of men, if you follow me. The lines play out;

your hammy fist, rib-cage
catching the butt-end and bruised, the full
body of you above, swaying in earnest,
the rip-tide yanking down, the silver
scanting of your prey. I say the good hang on
long past their useful days.
Here’s the dive, the dark-skinned boys of sleep
with fistfuls of pearl, with fistfuls of deep, deep.

Now say this is my body and mean it.
Not the dark room and sailors, not a platter
of maggot and bread. Just an arm, here,
a figurehead, and you on the deck,
hauling in your catch.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

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Hannah Craig: “Yesterday, while reading the newspaper, I saw a photo of a big-eyed youngster reading a book. The caption underneath read ‘… opens his eyes wide.’ I think that’s what reading poetry does for me … it teaches me to keep my eyes wide open. To pay attention. As Lorca writes in his City That Does Not Sleep, ‘If someone does close his eyes / a whip, boys, a whip! / Let there be a landscape of open eyes …’” (web)

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