“Emotional Self-Regulation, with Birds and Gifted Child” by Sean KelbleyPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2022: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Dark Figures” by Matthew King. “Emotional Self-Regulation, with Birds and Gifted Child” was written by Sean Kelbley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Sean Kelbley
EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION, WITH BIRDS AND GIFTED CHILD
Comment from the artist, Matthew King: “It was a pleasure and a privilege to read these variously wonderful poems and many were hard to pass up, but ‘Emotional Self-Regulation, with Birds and Gifted Child’ hooked me with its Steller’s Eagle, reeled me in with its comic chorus of chanting seagulls (although, to be fair, I feel like the gulls must think the geese are unbearably dumb; these things are all relative!), and won’t let me go. I had a very different experience as a ‘gifted kid’—from an early age I was in a ‘gifted program’ (one of my old friends from which was the first to inform me of the enormous lost Asian eagle that had made its way to Maine) and always felt like I was surrounded by bigger fish. As an unsheltered adult my fish-out-of-water frustrations are complicated by concerns about elitism to which the kid in the poem is forgivably, gloriously oblivious, but boy does that biggest bird take me with it on its oceanic voyage, and oh how I love the birds that turn up their beaks at winter vacations to warmer climes. It’s hard to relax when it’s snowing in your head, but who wants to relax, anyway? ‘Big Feelings’—if indeed!”
Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2021: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Nature People #8” by Bruce McClain. “The Widower” was written by Nick Bertelson for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “In contrast to its surreality, the most striking feature of Bruce’s drawing are, to me, the eyes. I’m convinced this poem has told their story.”
Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2021: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Nature People #8” by Bruce McClain. “Last Reach” was written by Wendell Smith for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
Comment from the artist, Bruce McClain: “I selected this poem, ‘Last Reach,’ because it illustrates in word what I render in pencil, the process of life and death. ‘If I am a leaf on a bough,’ ‘and the long and giddy dance before I reach the ground’ capture, in a subtle way, what my art represents, the lessons learned and the wisdom gained through the ups and downs as life unfurls. This illustration is the first in a series of fifty which will appear in my forthcoming book, Elder Leaf.”
“Study Abroad” by Cassie BurkhardtPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2021: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Easy Like Sunday Morning” by Shannon Jackson. “Study Abroad” was written by Cassie Burkhardt for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Cassie Burkhardt
STUDY ABROAD
His name was Francesco and he was the first boy who ever made me a coffee
the morning after.
I say boy, but he was a million years older than me, wore a suit and worked at a bank in Paris.
I say morning, but it was 2 p.m.
and we had been rolling around in the sheets, windows wide open
for hours and hours, in and out of half-sleep, and is it Sunday?
Hair a blonde rumple, pillows gasping for air,
underwear slingshot across the room.
This is love, I thought.
I was twenty.
He was the first boy I didn’t want to forget instantly the next day, no need to slink off
into the terrible sunlight leaking mascara, no,
he made me a coffee,
an actual coffee, a café au lait,
with the bialetti on the stove,
poured it into a bowl as big as my head
or what was inside me holding its breath.
Pour toi, ma belle.
This is what adults do, I thought,
as I tented my fingers around the warm bowl.
I tried to sip it gingerly, make it last, but
it’s hard not to gulp what’s good.
We took another tumble into the bedroom, grabbing and melting into each other’s bodies,
whispering secrets in two languages: j’ai envie de toi, te voglio bene.
It was the first time sex was pleasure, and I wasn’t about to hold back.
I am alive, I thought,
and went home wearing his t-shirt, which smelled exactly like clouds
and vibrated like a cello on top of me, which Francesco also played
beautifully, I should add here.
He picked me up on his motorcycle whenever we went out
and I have no memory of anywhere we went
because my arms were around his waist and my brain got lost in the
roundabouts, my hair a streak of blonde against woolen coats,
the gray November sky, Paris, my heart,
a pigeon taking flight out of an alley,
buildings illuminated, a blaring siren, the Seine.
On va chez moi? Oui, on y va.
And we were back in the sheets,
his hands cupped around my ass.
I am a woman, I thought,
a desirous, covetous being:
toes, breasts, hip bones, curve of spine on cotton …
I divided him in half with my tongue, a slow line from hip bones to lips
before I undressed him completely and then we switched.
He could taste the hunger in me, could tell I was one wick
and a handful of matches on the inside.
He fed the fire.
He fed it motorcycles, sex
and coffee.
This lasted for exactly two months
until I could tell something had worn off. Quelque chose a disparu.
He wasn’t answering my calls, suddenly very busy. I stared into my Nokia for days.
Finally, I panicked, cut class, showed up at his place in the afternoon unannounced,
knocking furiously at the door.
The room stopped, bows midair.
I had interrupted their string quartet rehearsal, my high heels and halter-top-desperation
oozing all over the salle de séjour like octopus ink.
I am a fool, I thought,
and excused myself to the bedroom,
stared out the big beautiful window at the foot of his bed,
watched the curtains take deep breaths.
Eventually, he came in and sat down quietly beside me
like how you might at church, a funeral.
He handed me a coffee. He didn’t have one.
I smoothed the sheets, held the warm bowl to my chest.
The curtains, caught in midair, were clinging to the wind.
Don’t say anything, I whispered. Please.
Let’s just sit here for a moment and look out the window.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Among the many excellent poems submitted this month, ‘Study Abroad’ stood out for its pure storytelling. It’s a portal to another place, and remains thoroughly engrossing no matter how many times I read it. Only a poem is capable of working that magic in three minutes.”
Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2021: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Easy Like Sunday Morning” by Shannon Jackson. “This Room” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
Comment from the artist, Shannon Jackson: “It was both thrilling and fascinating, and felt a great privilege indeed, to read through the poems inspired by my photograph. Each one impacted me for different reasons, but I chose ‘This Room’ for its personal resonance. Photography is most often a strictly felt experience for me—and usually what moves me to click the shutter is seeing, or feeling, something extraordinary in a seemingly ordinary moment. I felt this poem did much the same for me. Using the simple imagery and moments of a life, as well as the narrator’s personal confessions and musings, the poet speaks to the kind of love that is perhaps only possible at a certain age and stage of life, but which, given such duration, contains a multitude of layers and complexities. It left me pondering the extraordinariness in what might seem an otherwise ordinary love and life together.”
“On Getting Your Ducks in a Row” by Matthew KingPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2021: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Family” by Gouri Prakash. “On Getting Your Ducks in a Row” was written by Matthew King for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Matthew King
ON GETTING YOUR DUCKS IN A ROW
You’ll have to figure out what counts as ducks,
to start. It’s not as easy as you’d think:
our schemes of things are always in a flux;
the borders of our kinds expand and shrink.
Once satisfied you’ve got your ducks defined,
you’ll make your head hurt trying to decide
how best they’d be arranged—should they be lined
up bill to tail, or maybe side by side?
And if you get them set, next thing you know,
they’ll find their feet and waddle all around,
before, parading to the pond below,
they plop, one by one, from the slippery ground.
Birds will go where their brains will have them go.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Matthew King is a talented nature photographer himself (check out the galleries on his website), which might have given him an advantage in getting inside the minds of these ducks. Either way, this sonnet is delightful, which is something few poems manage. I almost feel like a duck myself as they plop into that pond one by one.”
Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2021: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Family” by Gouri Prakash. “Grief” was written by Susan Carroll Jewell for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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Susan Carroll Jewell
GRIEF
She lands with the others, but now has turned away
without ruffling this pond. Each feather carries its own
Comment from the artist, Gouri Prakash: “As I read the poems, I felt like I was looking through a kaleidoscope of perspectives. No two poems had the same idea or interpretation. In line, ‘Grief’ is a poem that reminds me of a different situation or a new context every time I read it. The central idea of how another’s grief can be so palpable that it leads to one’s own feelings of hopelessness at being unable to serve as a source of respite, is gracefully renditioned. The last line, ‘We are so small on this tiny pond,’ underlines the sense of despair that pervades our tightly-knit worlds.”
