September 9, 2024

“Aging in Place” by Dick WestheimerPosted by

Dick Westheimer

AGING IN PLACE

I thought that as age changed us, I would not be
so jealous of that gingham shirt, of the water you
stand under in the shower, of the sheets that don’t
need consent to wrap around you in the night, replete.
 
I thought that old men’s lusts were tamed beasts,
not needing a leash or cage to constrain and that
old women’s skin would not make me forget
my other appetites. But here I am, incomplete—
 
your shoulder bare in your rolled sleeve work-shirt,
your skirt revealing just enough of your thigh and I
want to greet each with my hand, to be the soft shirt,
the clean sheets, the water. And you and your thirst,
 
when you see me? I still don’t know how you can
resist the cockled bruised skin of such an aging man.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

__________

Dick Westheimer: “Sometimes cliches are the best I can offer: The more things change, the more they stay the same. I home in on my wife’s bare shoulder and thigh as much as I did when we were in our 20s. I retain some of the ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ insecurity I felt early on in our relationship. And I still can’t understand how someone as beautiful as she is is attracted to ho-hum me (and my now cockled bruised skin). But somehow, she is.” (web)

Rattle Logo

September 8, 2024

“What If I Cautioned You” by Laura TanenbaumPosted by

Laura Tanenbaum

WHAT IF I CAUTIONED YOU

found poem, fundraising texts

Can I tell you about my family’s farm?
We stood together under a HUGE tent,
a bit longer than usual.
More butterflies than a freaking’ garden.
Is there anything I can say?
What if I told you,
or what if I reminded you,
or what if I cautioned,
Cruelty and chaos.
I can’t even begin to comprehend.
Revenge and retribution.
STOP
13 million 35 million, 5 now,
10 now, 20 before midnight, 109,201
Any another amount. Anything at all.
Last chance
STOP2END
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Laura Tanenbaum: “Political language can be many things, sometimes ethically profound and often profane, but the art of the fundraising text, with its epistolary desperation, has a poetry all its own. All the love to the writers of all stripes who earn their keep crafting these things.” (web)

Rattle Logo

September 7, 2024

“Six Steps to Becoming a Fossil” by Maddie MalonePosted by

Maddie Malone (age 14)

SIX STEPS TO BECOMING A FOSSIL

1.
 
Hidden under pink sheets, a silver blade
pools into my hand, and I watch you
pour grain into a sieve slowly, your braid
falls, and I have never thought something so true
 
as to what rice in cold water means. Glowing
white pumpkin seeds swallow nighttime, eating light
they swarm to your head, growing in your hair, singing
as the moths lovingly chew. You lovingly knight
 
me a crown, the ambient light shines warm
in my ears, and I begin to feel them holding
my face, they surgically sliver tendons to deform
my head from its body. It is saintly, lifting
 
through steam rising in the kitchen. Thank you
I mutter, swimming into a cloud of dew.
 
 
2.
 
I mutter. Swimming into a cloud of dew
left by the night before, pans sit unwashed
in the silver sink, buttercream is slew
across my mother’s KitchenAid, shit—
 
I am waiting for the hurried pounding
through oak doors, I have slept for far too long
in my own skin, I am layered. You are lusting
for something cleaner. Wash me on HOT, STRONG,
 
and I will spin, detox, bleach me in two
and I will be ivory threadbare, eat
Tide Pods to clean your liver, orange and blue
in your pink smooth intestine. I breathe sleet
 
mixed with nicotine and think of you,
I am kitchen steam tunneling through.
 
 
3.
 
I’m a kitchen. Steam tunneling through
my iron vents, exhaust pumps between
the folds of my skin, grease puddles, view
me under a code law. Sink your teeth into protein
 
by all means, eat my walk-in freezer, find
my rats and roaches, make them scuttle
in deep drywall, die in the walls, drive them lined
with new, pure, insulation. Leave, be subtle,
 
but not too much to where no one
notices. Clock out and go home with dirt
under your fingernails, like silt, stay done,
stay with the grease in your palms. Inert
 
filth, pig blood never leaves a stain, at least
they told me that, and I’ve never felt so leased.
 
 
4.
 
They told me that. And I’ve never felt as leased
before. Your rental had oak cabinets,
beige Michigan carpet, white trim, gone yellow, pieced
together boards warp from waterbeds. Laminate
 
smell lingers, glued adhesive corrodes your nose—
bleeds onto Kleenex—and I think it’s chronic
how my body can’t leave, I need to dispose
of this magnet in my stomach, it’s embryonic
 
and it will calcify in my body
I will be a mother of hope, one whose
own body is a coward. I’m perpetually
your image, I will not fade yellow, or lose
 
my color, I am yours until a new
Polaroid is taken, until, I renew.
 
 
5.
 
A Polaroid is taken. Until, I renew
my license, flash photography blinks
and I am blind at the DMV. It is true
what they say about having too many drinks,
 
my cheeks are flush, blood vessels crack like roads
swimming down my face. I am a river stone
worn and worn, then I am bones, it erodes
until it finds my core. Although I am grown
 
since the last baby blue photo of me
all I feel is exhaustion, my marrow
occupies my mind. It will melt, I foresee
myself holding the liquid, it slips, narrow
 
gaps between my fingers collapse, I’ll see
myself sink to the floor, I am not made of me.
 
 
6.
 
I sink to the floor, I am not made of me
anymore. Every seven years your cells
regenerate, and I live in my second body—
In five years I will occupy a new hotel
 
without ever signing a lease. What else
is there to become in seven years?
I wish I could collect my old shells
and hang them to dry, they were pioneers
 
and war heroes, I would pin their skin
with badges of honor and bravery
that should’ve been there, now I can begin
to prep my body, that I will savor
 
with its medals and souvenirs, I can start
now, I will be bedazzled until the next seven years.
 

—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Maddie Malone: “I think that my love for poetry can only be described as my love for flow. The feeling of flow is the concentration so strong that everything dissolves around you, to where your world is only you and the poem. It isn’t the words themselves that make me love writing poetry, but the state I am in as I write.”

Rattle Logo

September 6, 2024

“The End of Childhood Is Not Maturity” by Brian O’SullivanPosted by

Brian O’Sullivan

THE END OF CHILDHOOD IS NOT MATURITY

“Here; just stick the end of this hose in yer muzzle—guzzle
the cold ones we’ll pour down the funnel … GUZZLE! GUZZLE!”
 
Our clunkers squat in St. Greg’s parking lot; there is Chuck’s
pride, his sixty-six gold Impala—a bad gas guzzler. “GUZZ–LE!”
 
In the sacristy, Fr. Ellis, trembling, twists open the communion wine
and hears the choirs of seraphim chanting, “Gu–ZZLE! Gu–ZZLE!”
 
Down the block, Mr. Mancini, old soldier of Mussolini, makes bitter
wine in his garage, and, trying to ease his ancient troubles, guzzles.
 
Out on the sun-blessed and -blasted savannah, after a rain, it’s time
to celebrate; around a cool oasis, the assembled gazelles guzzle.
 
A man and a woman and a blackbird / are one, O Wallace of
Hartford, if they, in their thirst, from one shared nozzle guzzle.
 
Paolo says an expanding spiral of beer will soon consume the
world; so it must be, if all entities that want a buzz’ll guzzle.
 
There’s a spark, entangled with all the stars in the Milky Way, in
each of us—stardust that, one day, our expanding sun’ll guzzle.
 
Sure as the beer drips, we’re consumed from within;
I hear the bacteria chanting “Guzz–LLE! Guzz–LLE!
 
I thought it was an ugly way to name a form that sweetly flows
like nectar; but I’m learning to love the words guzzle, ghazal.
 
The night was cold and the beer was colder. All around, all
the thirsty crew were chanting: “GU–ZZLE! GU–ZZLE!”
 
Thinking back, I almost need a drink, for I face a guzzle puzzle—
Do I have the brain cells left to write a “guzzle” ghazal?
 
Now grow up, Brian, and cease your childish “guzzle, guzzle”—
Sublimate! Transform! and make your guzzle ghazal.
 

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

__________

Brian O’Sullivan: “I love the challenge of having each couplet work independently and in contrast to the others but still somehow attempting to give the ghazal as a whole a sense of composition and movement. (Getting feedback on Rattle’s Critique of the Week helped a lot with this.) However, what really resonated with me was hearing Karan Kapoor and Shannan Mann, on The Poetry Space_, discuss how ghazals give poets license to be irreverent, as we might in bawdy ballads or drinking songs, even while also making space for panoramic visions. I don’t know whether or not featuring beer being guzzled through a funnel is a little too irreverent—but if you’re reading this in Rattle, maybe it turned out to be just irreverent enough.” (web)

Rattle Logo

September 5, 2024

“Lana Del Rey Intervenes When She Notices I’ve Stopped Writing About My Ex” by Megan FalleyPosted by

Megan Falley

LANA DEL REY INTERVENES WHEN SHE NOTICES I’VE STOPPED WRITING ABOUT MY EX

It’s good that he’s gone,
but don’t let him be too gone.

He’s got to be candle blown out
in the other room gone.

Or exhaust pipe
huffing down the block gone.

Not closure-gone. Not someone-else’s-
baby-gone. Not cut your hair gone.

He can’t ever be too far
away to hurt you, honey.

You can pedal away but make sure it’s a polaroid
of him clicking in your bicycle wheel down the boulevard.

Put a suitcase in a trunk and every state in between you
if you want, but when you turn on the radio,

search for his song.
Don’t get me wrong, you can love.

You can bend over
a pinball machine for a biker,

or a balcony for a photographer.
You can bend over a bridge

for a poet, but when you’re in a strange city
at a lonely hotel bar and they ask

what you’re drinking,
say his name.

—from Rattle #46, Winter 2014

__________

Megan Falley: “I started writing poems when I was a little girl—mostly in handmade Mother’s Day cards or valentines. I think most of my poems are still basically Mother’s Day cards and valentines, just dark, grittier ones that no one would ever want to receive.” (web)

Rattle Logo

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

__________

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.”

Rattle Logo

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

__________

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.”

Rattle Logo