March 17, 2024

“Kill Them in the Morning” by Tishani DoshiPosted by

Tishani Doshi

KILL THEM IN THE MORNING

I’m trying to find where it says,
If your enemy comes to slay you at night,
kill them in the morning. What happens
in the hours of waiting? Do you sing
to one another across the trenches,
stargaze from casements, then set off
to duel at first light? What is it about the sun
rising that’s so self-righteous? The firstness,
the lightness? There’s an allegory somewhere
about a girl holding scissors encircled by soldiers
with guns. Don’t we know that the dragging
from trains takes place after dark, that wars
always happen offstage until they’re not? Summer
is almost upon us, romantic and lonely. I know,
I know, no tightrope-walking allowed between our house
and the neighbour’s. Haven’t you dreamed
of disappearing for a day, then returning
to life, triumphant? Wouldn’t you want
to know who missed you, who rejoiced?
The idea that there are no innocent people.
What colour would you call this hair
under the rubble? My enemy’s enemy
is an Ottoman couch. But we’re here now,
those of us alive, standing on the beach,
facing the rosy dawn—how it slip slaps us
into forgiveness, how we turn the other cheek.
 

—from Poets Respond
March 17, 2024

__________

Tishani Doshi: “Not sure there are any explanations. How must we be alone, how must we be together?” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 16, 2024

“A Lover, Rejected, Rejects the Myth That Is Billie Holiday” by Lynne ThompsonPosted by

Lynne Thompson

A LOVER, REJECTED, REJECTS THE MYTH THAT IS BILLIE HOLIDAY—

knows she was an uncommon arroyo who understood
that blue on the quintile is a withering thing;

knows Billie lived in an upended Vermont and was
not unlike a nova or a seed in a scalawag’s belly;

figures that La Gardenia’s mistake was believing that
autumn in New York would make a satisfactory break

and that junk was the best horse she never saddled.
But I have learned to beware the tonsils of swivelhipped

conquerors whose lanolin cannot absorb
loneliness. I have gotten lost in the politics of

undressed mud and am no longer obliged to lie down
with fat cats. When I am too scared to dream,

I, my own bald-faced tympani, admonish my dismal pen
to publish the music that will alarm my arrogant judges.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

__________

Lynne Thompson: “’A Lover, Rejected’ was the chance to allow language to elope with some of my favorite concepts—sass, skepticism and Billie Holiday, with bon mots like ‘scalawag’ and ‘quintile’ in attendance.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 15, 2024

“Holding Light” by Kristin George BagdanovPosted by

Kristin George Bagdanov

HOLDING LIGHT

My father took me to the shed
Sunday afternoons to fix piecemeal
wood into frames for selling.

He didn’t talk unless
something displeased him,
like when I tripped over the scrap pile
and sent the bag of nails flying.

Then he would open his mouth
and shut his hand. He’d pound me
like a fence post, say he’d fix
that posture if it was the last thing.

On quiet days we worked
in separate ends of the shed,
sanding and squaring as light built
and collapsed around us

until the dark air finally came
inside. Then father would twist his head
until just the corner of his cobalt eye
met mine and bark for the lantern.

And some days he would strike
the match himself, hovering over
wick until he felt flame lick
through fifty years calloused on his palm.

On those days he would turn
his face and mutter at me,
and I would stand beside him
and I would hold the light.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Kristin George Bagdanov: “Truthfully, the seed for this poem came from a reality home-makeover show on a very boring morning at the gym. A very small seed, rest assured, but once again it reminds me that to write is to be aware, to find reason for pause during even the most ordinary and mundane activities. In addition to making poetry out of banalities, I pride myself in creating catchy jingles, usually while making homemade soup for an ever-increasing quantity of people.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 14, 2024

“Trash” by Lowell JaegerPosted by

Lowell Jaeger

TRASH

This year’s leaves are last year’s leaves
again. Even the loam breathes.
I believe this and Leonard YoungBear says
in the old days there was no such thing as trash:

Indians camped and left ashes only, or bones,
bits of hide, feathers, mounds of buffalo dung.
What the dogs didn’t eat, coyotes did.
Or wind, snow. Beneath trees and prairie grass

everything from the earth returned. Human life
too, Leonard says, should be like that.
I know, I say, I’m not afraid anymore
of dying. It’s trash

that worries me. Caskets. I keep thinking
of tin cans, foil, yellow rubber raincoats don’t
rot very quick, don’t burn either; bury them
and something spits them back. I’d sooner fall

in the woods, feed the sharp teeth of many hungers
beyond my own. And part of me will swim downstream
in the cold eyeball of a fish next time, my soul
under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Lowell Jaeger: “As a teen in the great north woods, I spent long quiet hours in my hometown library, where I found solace from troubles at home, troubles in school, and troubles in the world. I sat in the big leather chairs and read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. I had no clear understanding of the book, such a foreign, worldly voice, so unlike the talk of local lumberjacks and factory workers. Yet that poem and I sat and conversed mysteriously beyond the words on the page. For a while, that poem was my best friend. I’d be honored if any poem of mine were ever so esteemed.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 13, 2024

“Misting” by George BilgerePosted by

George Bilgere

MISTING

is the one thing involving flowers
I’m reasonably good at. Daybreak
finds me in the yard with my hose,
attentive as a bee. What a pleasure
to choose “Mist” on my watering gun
and drift like a cloud above the roses.
Last month my sister died, a storm
of lightning in her brain. And now
this news that someone who once
was the object of all my bouquets
is spending her final summer.
Each day brings more bad weather,
which is another way of saying
I’m in my sixties. But here, in the frail
September morning, my hand tipped in fog,
the flowers lift their faces to me
with bright, mystifying questions,
and for once I have an answer.
 

—from Cheap Motels of My Youth
2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

George Bilgere: “When I was eight years old my parents got divorced. My mother packed her three kids into an old Chevy station wagon and drove us from St. Louis to Riverside, California, looking for a fresh start. She had visited there when she was an Army nurse stationed in LA during the war and fell in love with the place. That cross-country car trip, full of cheap diners, cheap hotels, and desperation, changed my life. I fell in love with the vastness and beauty, the glamor and tawdriness, of America. I’ve travelled all over the country since then, on that ancient and deeply American quest, the search for home.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 12, 2024

“Considering Metal Man (as a Template for World Peace)” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

CONSIDERING METAL MAN (AS A TEMPLATE FOR WORLD PEACE)

The sum of evil would be greatly diminished if men
could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.
—Pascal

He sits in Union Station so that you don’t have to,
Covered in metallic paint, not moving, like applied

Pascal taken one step publicly further. The tourists
Patronize him; put money in his gold painted fedora,

And encourage him not to explain. The homeless wish
They had his strangeness, his calculation, his economy

Of gesture. The writers know he is a fleshed out
Character worthy of 200 pages or more, a catatonic

Knight-errant appearing everywhere in full armor.
The philosophers see him as a meta-symbol,

A shimmering sage who sits better than the Buddha.
Look how he sits and stares, they say. Observe how

Nobody dies because of this.

—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
Tribute to Poets Writing Abroad

__________

Erik Campbell: “One afternoon in the summer of 1994 I was driving to work and I heard Garrison Keillor read Stephen Dunn’s poem ‘Tenderness’ on The Writer’s Almanac. After he finished the poem I pulled my car over and sat for some time. I had to. That is why I write poems. I want to make somebody else late for work.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 11, 2024

“Now That You’re Gone” by Thom WardPosted by

Thom Ward

NOW THAT YOU’RE GONE

at least until the end of the first semester,
who’s going to yank the sheet from the mattress,
click the nubs of new bicuspids,
if you’re not around to dream?
 
When your dolls escape into their miniskirts,
and the night improvises on its black guitar,
who’ll be left to ask for water, have to pee,
have to pee and ask for water?
 
Now whose friends will want to sleep over?
(While the rest of us are sleep with.)
Bunk beds, big plans, all that teeter-totter chatter,
who’s going to fart, guffaw and giggle,
need one more blanket, five more minutes, please?
 
When the subs dive, the searchlights flare,
and our doors, half-open, suddenly close,
who’s going to be in the next room snoring?—
a few mumbles, an occasional grunt,
so we’ll know what is safe and what is here.
 

—from Rattle #14, Winter 2000

__________

Thom Ward: “When not writing, teaching, or editing poetry, I enjoy running after soccer balls and baseballs my four-year-old has set in motion. That kind of workout serves as training for what my teenagers have required of me, namely to serve as Excutive ATM-on-Wheels.” (web)

Rattle Logo