December 4, 2024

“Dawn” by Luis TorresPosted by

Luis Torres

DAWN

you were playing god all summer, back when summer
meant being with you and winter meant being on a
different coast than you: playing god the way you
slowed time the way you quickened time the way
the way you sent the minute hand flying backward
with nothing but a whirl of a finger or a glance:
my little divinity you took me up flights of stairs
in the city and down flights of stairs in the city,
& from across the avenue you sent a kiss in the shape
of the flight of a bird, & it was a spell
you were casting, that i knew you were casting on me,
& one night under the full power of that spell,
in the ruby plush of a sofa, with stars low at
the windows, i said, love you to always, & you said
it back, & when i checked again i saw i was
mistaken, it was the ruby plush of a grassy embankment,
& the stars were low & it was a garden they lowered on,
& the city hadn’t been built yet & we were the only two
in the world, in a world your spell had made recent
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

__________

Luis Torres: “The poem is an exercise in breathing. I found myself, as I wrote it, calling back to phrases I had written a line or two before. I merely allowed a breathing rhythm to take place. The exercise is meditative, and it grounded me not only in the ‘moment’ but in something much larger than any one moment concerning that individual, Luis. ‘We are always more than ourselves,’ cautioned J.P. Sartre.” (web)

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December 3, 2024

“Allen Ginsberg’s Dead” by M.L. LieblerPosted by

M.L. Liebler

ALLEN GINSBERG’S DEAD

Why, to write down the stuff
and people of everyday,
must poems be dressed in gold,
in old fearful stone? …
I want poems stained
by hands and everydayness.
—Pablo Neruda

I know Allen Ginsberg’s dead,
And I want to write
A poem for him just like every-
Body else wants to do, but I can’t
Help but think of my neighbor
Who too died alone, recently, in his home of
30 years, and how he was a person
Who will never have a poem
Written in his honor or to his memory.
 
He was a person who will never have
His life enshrined in sound
And symbol of verse or song.
 
I didn’t know my neighbor either,
But I want to remember him
With verse and poesy just the same.
 
I want to celebrate
His life as the important treasure
He must have been as someone’s
 
Husband, father, brother, friend.
I want to do this
Simply because he lived.
 
My neighbor wasn’t famous,
And I probably only saw him once
Or twice in all the years that I lived
Behind his back fence.
 
But his words always made me
Amazed at the kindness of this world
When he spoke softly to me,
While he tended his garden.
 
I don’t remember his words
As memorable quotes spoken
By a famous person. It was just small talk
 
Spoken in the lexicon of the backyard.
No “Howl” or “Kaddish” or
“Sunflower Sutra” to be sure,
 
But graceful words that rose
And danced over the fence,
Behind his red bricked house.
 
So, while I would really love
To write a poem for Allen Ginsberg,
Like everyone else, right now
It seems more important for me to capture
My neighbor’s life, just another person
Whom I never knew.
 
I’ll write it all down
In a poem that he’ll never read
And that his family will never see
In print or hear at a public reading.
 
But isn’t that what poetry is all about?
Images speaking to the unspeakable
In our dreams as we lie awake in our sleep?
 
And, now, because I’ve shared this poem
With all of you, we are forever connected
All of our bones together
Side by side in the rich graveyard
Soil of poetry and life.
 

—from Rattle #9, Summer 1998

__________

M.L. Liebler: “When I’m in the second grade, I start scribbling stuff. It’s—you guys know, being poets and writers—it’s in there; you can’t do anything about it. But I had no idea, and I would get in trouble for it. They would call my grandmother and say, ‘He scribbles, and we don’t know what it is, but he’s scribbling again, so you pay for the book.’ When I got to the fifth grade I was doing this all the time, scribbling on paper and notebooks and so on. I remember having a big English textbook that had a pelican on a post in the ocean, and when I opened that book I noticed that it had things in it that had a lot of white space around them. When I saw that, I thought, ‘That’s kind of what I’m scribbling. What I’m scribbling has a lot of white space around it.’ So at that point, that’s when I was first able to say, ‘Oh, it’s a poem.’” (web)

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December 2, 2024

“Possible Reasons Why” by Anne RankinPosted by

Anne Rankin

POSSIBLE REASONS WHY

with appreciation for Weldon Kees,
especially his “Small Prayer”

The career purgatoried into a litany of left turns, almost-theres, and no-way-outs.
The reputation he counted on was outnumbered by the five stages of grief.
The fact of everything evolving into something that orbited a wound.
The way nothingness kept presenting itself, unschooled and asexual.
The lack (and lack and lack) of the proper tool to sieve sorrow.
The new pills worsened the old illness and started a new one.
The reflection in the mirror caught his face and let it drop.
The building to house (the future) projects closed.
The film company got brickwalled by a lawsuit.
The weight of the hours hung from his teeth.
The woman he loved became someone else.
The blood in his bones played out of tune.
The things that were stacked loosened.
The things that were loose got stacked.
The wind in his lungs turned rancid.
The clock grew into a drumbeat.
The failure to find the right armchair
to accessorize a shotgun.
All he could hear was the bridge.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

__________

Anne Rankin: “Although it’s likely Weldon Kees died years before I was born, somehow, he knew me. Or at least, that’s how I felt after reading ‘Small Prayer.’ The way he captured the anguish of languishing in the depths of major depression—and all in six lines—amazes me still. (In truth the poem speaks to any experience that leaves one feeling grievously wounded.) Later I read more of his work (as well as James Reidel’s biography, Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees), and could easily relate to his struggles with one disappointment after another. Nothing would please me more than for others to discover Kees’ work. He’s worth exploring. As for my own work, in general I’m trying to eradicate loneliness—yours, mine, and ours—one poem at a time.”

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December 1, 2024

“Somewhere It’s Always Thanksgiving” by Al OrtolaniPosted by

Al Ortolani

SOMEWHERE IT’S ALWAYS THANKSGIVING

Last night when I crawled into bed and switched off the light,
too tired to read, too tired for an audio book on low volume even,
I said what I called my evening prayer, which is more of a recap
 
of the day and a short run down of all I should be thankful for.
I recalled how the day had blown by; more wind and chaff
than wheat spread on a sheet at my knees. I made a vow that
 
tomorrow I’d take a moment to put the rush of the day on hold,
pause for even a moment to scratch the dog’s ears, the two of us
in the backyard below the wet moon in the still dripping rain.
 
This would be the exact minute that I suck the air into my lungs.
We’re alive my boy, I say to him, and he nuzzles me with his
great nose and searches my face with his honey eyes.
 
We’ve only got a moment I say to him, and then tomorrow
it’s someone else in this same backyard with the same dogwood
we planted, drawing in its sap for the winter, protecting
 
the heartwood for another someone’s spring. But he already
understands all this. It’s why his eyes are so warm, so completely
given over to the one wish that matters. Ok, my boy, it’s ok.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Al Ortolani: “I write a lot of poems about my dog. Some are mushy if not downright maudlin. Maybe it’s a flaw in my character, one I can attribute to my age. As a kid, I never cared much for Thanksgiving. Except for apple pie, I considered it boring. The holiday means more to me today. I still don’t care much for turkey, and no one has mastered grandmother’s apple pie recipe, but that’s not the point. Is it?”

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November 30, 2024

“The Great American Screenplay” by Patrick Ryan FrankPosted by

Patrick Ryan Frank

THE GREAT AMERICAN SCREENPLAY

In corporate offices across the city,
in every company’s cubicle-chambered heart,
 
there are men alone all lunch hour: men
who watch the tendons shifting in their hands
 
as they type love over and over again—
ring finger, ring finger, index, middle—softly,
 
though, only barely touching the keys,
never hard enough to light up the screen.

—from Rattle #42, Winter 2013

__________

Patrick Ryan Frank: “I spend a lot of time thinking about the education of emotion. Where do we learn how to feel? Movies, television shows, pop songs, novels and poems. More and more, we act like actors starring in our own life stories.” (web)

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November 29, 2024

“The Astronomical Clock” by James RaganPosted by

James Ragan

THE ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK

Prague, Spring, 1968

First, sit near the Oriel Chapel
or at the statue feet of Jan Hus
where the heretics rise tall
as wax in flames of greening bronze.
There, you’ll listen to the Mozart menuetto
from the House of the Stone Bell
where thousands stood once, stiff as clock
stems in the Prague spring, cheering
to the symphony of Smetana’s My Country.
 
You’ll marvel at the medieval Orloj clock
as it chimes the hour’s song
across Old Town Square. There on its wall,
the skeleton of Death pulls a chain
up, then round, to shake the crowned
heads of Vanity and Greed. Beneath
its skeletal arm, a Turk wags a pouch of coins.
An hourglass turns sideways down.
 
Listen, as the tourists draw in breath,
like Danes to the stone of Tycho Brahe,
on cue, with hands above their eyes,
sycophants to the clock’s theater
of changing time, the astronomical
trust in earth’s inspired motion.
 
Now, don’t fail to heed the Walk
of the Apostles, posing like saintly saviors,
spiraling in procession past the windows
at the clock’s summit. Daily they parade
their disguise as dancing imps, all wood
and ruthlessly wise, to keep the sun and moon
together, like two warring nations
passionately clinging each to their lost history.
Above the dance, a cockerel flaps
its wings and caws for separation.
 

for Alan

 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

__________

James Ragan: “I was born one of 13 children from immigrant Slovak parents with English as a second language. As early as grade school, I was the object of derision and learned early that I could win fights with words rather than fists. Thus, language and poetry by extension became my source of inspiration. I write to break down borders. My sensibility has always been global, to find expression through my poetry, plays, and films to bring individuals and worlds, seemingly apart, closer in understanding. The cafes I write in are my libraries—from Paris to Prague to New York and Los Angeles. I write to live out loud, and through the expansive reach of art, hope to achieve community through a common language.”

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November 28, 2024

“The Scene Is Set” by Rose LennardPosted by

Zaubererturm by Jennifer S. Lange, abstract illustration of a dark gray tower in the woods

Image: “Zaubererturm” by Jennifer S. Lange. “The Scene Is Set” was written by Rose Lennard for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

__________

Rose Lennard

THE SCENE IS SET

Time slows like ancient windows flowing,
reflections warp, horizons bend their bounds
and history is waiting to get going.
The trembling ash sing all the root-found
songs of hope they know; sound a warning
in shades of myth, the mauve around a wound.
Towers that fell have risen again this morning
vine-wound, cloud-capped, tall ships marooned.
 
Ravens hang forever turning overhead,
their blessed eggs lie cool in distant nests;
they dream of naked chicks with noisy gapes
to stuff with dug-up grubs until they fledge.
The screen awakes, the scene is set.
You cast the spell, the world remakes.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
October 2024, Editor’s Choice

__________

Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “‘The Scene is Set’ is masterfully composed in every way–the flawless rhymes, the fluid cadence, the depth of meaning. Lennard’s descriptions of Jennifer S. Lange’s piece are both visually and acoustically striking: ‘vine-wound, cloud-capped, tall ships marooned.’ The poet references ‘shades of myth,’ a fitting interpretation of ‘Zaubererturm’ and its soft, subtle invocation of fairytale and folklore. There’s an otherwordly quality to the image, interpreted by the poet as a different kind of reality (‘time slows … reflections warp…horizons bend …’). The poem’s ending, and its depiction of a temporal, illusory world, feels like a perfect homage to a gorgeously enigmatic work of art.”

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