August 10, 2024

“Loose Brick” by Sophia HallPosted by

Sophia Hall (age 14)

LOOSE BRICK

On the last Saturday of August,
an ambulance sirened past Valley Forge.
Your red Toyota was our caboose.
The cyclists who found me, squashed,
waved and went on.
 
Above me, a clean-shaven man in white smiled.
He told me I was brave.
 
Your electric toothbrush
vanished from Mom’s medicine cabinet.
My kitsch cast was claustrophobic with sharpie.
The maple trees out my window turned red.
How did the Continental soldiers survive
six months of wind whipped backs?
Were chalk blue fingers
suffering as usual?
 
Maybe if there was no Days Inn
no road trip no grasshopper girl
no garden wall     no loose brick
no tumble              no pavement
no falling                  no crumple
no left arm,         cracked in two
maybe you   would  have stayed.
 

—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Sophia Hall: “Writing poetry not only allows me to express gratitude for the seemingly ordinary moments that compose my life but also lets me heal from childhood and current events. In my poetry, I believe that the personal is powerful and political. I hope that when people read my poetry, they find companionship and feel a little less alone.”

Rattle Logo

August 9, 2024

“Vibrato Ghazal” by Alison LutermanPosted by

Alison Luterman

VIBRATO GHAZAL

Like a trembling tower of fruity gelato,
ladies and gentleman—my vibrato.
 
Even though my voice teacher says not to
warble like a church lady, my vibrato
 
blurs the pure tone, a little rubato
(how we hate to be confined)—because my vibrato
 
has a mind of her own, even sotto
voce you can hear the tremulous vibrato.
 
Like a wren chirruping to her inamorato— 
hard to quell that pesky vibrato.
 
Or an operatic artiste, alone in her grotto,
practicing arias, throbs forth the vibrato.
 
Lee, glancing at this notebook, asks if I sought to
write an ode to my vibrator? No, babe! My vibrato!
 
Sing smooth as honey, that’s my motto,
but there she goes again! Vibrato, vibrato.
 

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

__________

Alison Luterman: “I started playing around with the ghazal form recently and became enamored of its flexibility and capaciousness as a form. It can be sensual, humorous, erotic, spiritual, political, or all of the above. This one just arose spontaneously out of whatever I was thinking about at the time.” (web)

Rattle Logo

August 8, 2024

“Elegy for My 1958 Volkswagen” by Ruth BavettaPosted by

Ruth Bavetta

ELEGY FOR MY 1958 VOLKSWAGEN

Beautiful blue beetle,
curved and dumpy, lovely
as a lumpy German mädchen
overly fond of kartoffeln.

Four cylinders chugging
in the rear, it was like being chased
by a busy washing machine.

Air-cooled engine slow
to warm my feet.
I loved how I could tuck it
into tiny San Francisco parking spots.

No gas gauge, just guess
the gas to get you there.
No synchromesh first gear,
no coasting through stop signs.

Small outside, it still thought big.
Record load—seven bags of groceries,
five kids, one friendly neighbor,
two dogs and a pair of bowling shoes.

I sold it. Never realizing
that it prophesied my life—
the inability to pass abruptly,
the slow fade on the long uphill grade.

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012

__________

Ruth Bavetta: “I was a visual artist for years, until I found I also wanted images that could be painted with words. I wanted to use words, as I used images, to help me make sense of my life. Now, at the age of 76, I’ve become convinced that neither words nor images will suffice, because there is no sense-making. There is only what is and what has been. It’s enough to know I am human, separate and mortal, and that’s where I find my poems.” (web)

Rattle Logo

August 7, 2024

“True Story” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

TRUE STORY

I can’t escape the possibility
I was meant to own a Zamboni
but got stuck with three can openers instead.
Or that I should have kissed your knees 
last night when you got home 
from being with your friend 
who just had her cat killed. I know 
I’m supposed to write “put to sleep,”
but can she wake her up now? No.
And it was kind of you to rush over
right after work and you deserved praise
in some form and your knees 
don’t get enough attention, I guess
I’m saying. Where would we have gone
on the Zamboni? Dunno, but how
is certain: slowly. Here’s a headline
you never have to worry about: 
Three Canadians Killed 
in Zamboni Drag Racing Accident.
I’d buy a newspaper to tell the world 
how much I love you. Tons. Geegobs.
And how many cats have we cried over 
so far? Four, and one dog, and soon
we’ll start adding parents 
to that list, then one of us 
will look at empty chairs around the house 
and hate them. So knees, elbows, hair, 
and of course the more famous bits: 
I kiss thee in life and in poems, 
which are not life, more like a flashlight
turned on in a black hole. Geegobs
is a lot. Geegobs squared is more
accurate. But is amount really
the correct measure of love? 
I love you greenly, gymnastically, variously 
and Stradavariusly, I love you 
with my heart shadow and my brain fog 
and my suitcase-packing skills. The suitcase 
I’m packing for when you go 
to the next room and I have to follow.
Poor kitty. Poor friend. Poor us.
Who have to deal with mortality
using a limited toolkit. There’s crying,
drinking, toking, injecting, breaking
dishes and popsicle sticks, and loving
longer and softer those who remain.
How long ago did there cease to be a time
I can remember being without you?
1897, I think, the year the jumping jack
was invented, the year levitating
was added to the Olympics, the year
I first dreamed I was alive 
and saw you coming around the corner 
and thought, So this 
is the famous happiness 
I’ve heard so much about.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

__________

Bob Hicok: “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”

Rattle Logo

August 6, 2024

“Switch Plate” by Al OrtolaniPosted by

Al Ortolani

SWITCH PLATE

The day moves by me, and I’m still
at the same old desk that was two-wheeled
into my room by the custodian. The lights
run on some kind of motion detector.
If no one moves, let’s say, in ten minutes,
they blink out, and I have to raise my arms
and wave them like crazy. Possibly,
they click back on. Possibly, they don’t.
At this point, I have to get up and walk
the room in the dark until the shadow of me
is recognized in the recesses of the switch
plate. Once in a while I’ll have a class
of high school kids writing essays,
and the lights will suddenly black out,
and they will all look up astonished
like they’ve really done something cool.

—from Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street
2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Al Ortolani: “These poems represent connections to others, sometimes dark, sometimes light, often quirky. A fellow teacher, and mentor to the poet, once said that one of the most difficult measures of the career public school teacher is their ability to stay positive and elevated by interest, if not always in the subject matter, then in the hand raised outside of the T zone.” (web)

Rattle Logo

August 5, 2024

“Full of It” by Mary KeatingPosted by

Mary Keating

FULL OF IT

The moon swallowed the sun in one mouthful;
kept her maw open wide—spit him out full. 
 
On the days she feared he’d devour her,
she fed him sweet treats to keep his snout full.
 
On empty, they crossed over the border
to the States promising to be fruitful.
 
No one using a wheelchair came inside—
accessible parking always doubtful.
 
Motel owners didn’t announce their hatred;
Just let their no vacancy lights shout full.
 
Caretakers wondered how many more wars
till graveyards complained they were about full.
 
He asked to be buried with his husband;
his parents suddenly turned devoutful.
 
Most children rarely notice what parents
give up to make their kids’ lives bountiful.
 
The police shuddered when the school shooter
headed to classrooms they just counted full. 
 
How do you comfort parents of a child 
who didn’t have a chance to make them proudful?
 
One day a year, we give thanks for our gifts—
stuffing ourselves to prove we are grateful.
 
I’d write more couplets about falling short,
but the sun’s grumbling this day’s chockful.
 

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

__________

Mary Keating: “I love how ghazals make the poet omniscient. I can view a subject from all points of view, all disconnected, but somehow connected. This is how I imagine God views the universe and all the lives passing through time. To me the ghazal is a microcosm of the vast machinations of temporal existence. Magically, we gain a better understanding of life when we read or write a ghazal.” (web)

Rattle Logo

August 4, 2024

“Paragon” by Katie HartsockPosted by

Katie Hartsock

PARAGON

To eat sweet corn straight off
the cob, just shucked—
no one ever told me I could do that, like
no one ever. Another day
the world seems too full of protocols
boiled and buttered and salted.
How many times I sat with my grandfather
by the front yard rock
where we hammered walnuts apart
and shucked so many ears
for the huge pot my grandmother watched
inside and never once, the son
of tenant farmers, did he say, Just eat it
now, go ahead—he who loved immediacies,
gifts that arrived unmediated, charmed
with readiness. No I had to read
about it, and on I read, grieved
and grieved and grateful
still for the world, so much hiddenness
to live in. And stopped this afternoon
to give one of two bonneted daughters
a ten, three ones, and three quarters
for seven ears of corn and a small bouquet
of sunflowers, sticky with their stalk juice.
A while later and I never knew summer
could be like this, undivided,
as it always seemed in my youth
between cooked and raw, fun
and boredom, never been kissed
and yes, healthy and un, light and shadows
of television after dinner. I took sunflowers
to my mother, who used to be one, please God
may she be again. Then in an unhurried rain
my sons and I sat on the front porch and shucked
this corn, our shirts dampled with quiet
and I said, You know you can just eat it now.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Katie Hartsock: “Small revelations—such as, you can eat corn fresh straight off the cob, which is an idea that did not exist in the Ohio town where I grew up—can profoundly reorient in times of disorientation, and comfort in uncomfortable times.” (web)

Rattle Logo