November 10, 2024

“Haiku [it’s all over]” by petro c. k.Posted by

petro c. k.

HAIKU

 
 
 
it’s all over
but the counting
distant sirens
 
 
 

—from Poets Respond

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petro c. k.: “As one who often writes haiku, it’s always a challenge to distill moments to its essence. When I was sitting with my thoughts, I heard sirens off in the distance, which captured the sense I had of melancholy, anxiety, and unknown dangers on the horizon.” (web)

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November 9, 2024

“Our Waitress’s Marvelous Legs” by Grace BauerPosted by

Grace Bauer

OUR WAITRESS’S MARVELOUS LEGS

It’s men I’m prone to eye, but when she comes
to take our order, I’m too distracted
to think beyond drinks, too awed
by the ink that garments her limbs
to consider appetizers, much less entrees.
 
It’s not polite to stare, I know,
but the fact of her invites it.
Why else the filigreed ankles,
those Peter Max planets orbiting her
left shin, that Botticelli angel soaring
just below her right knee?
 
She’s a walking illustration, adorned
to amaze, yet as seemingly nonchalant
as the homely white-sneakered HoJo girl
I myself once was, describing the specials
of the day, listing our options for dressings,
then scribbling the choices we make
on her hand-held pad.
 
My companion can’t help wondering how far
up the ante goes, says he bets there’s a piercing
or two at the end of the, so to speak, line.
I’m more inclined to ponder motivation
and stamina—how long and how much
she suffered to make herself a work of art.
For I have no doubt, she sees her own flesh
as a kind of canvas. Her body as frame
and wall and traveling exhibition,
a personal statement on public display.
 
Same could be said of the purple tights
I wear beneath my frilly black skirt—
too bold a choice for some people’s tastes,
but not a permanent commitment.
Clothes make the woman more
than the man, despite the familiar adage,
and body as both self and other is
a contradiction we live with, however comfortably
—or not—we grow into our own skins.
 
I’ll admit part of what I feel
is admiration, even envy.
Whatever she may ever become
in this world, she will never again be drab.
She’ll wear this extravagance
of color and form as she grays
into more—or less—wisdom.
 
But tonight she simply performs
her duty as server, courteous and efficient
as she does what she can to satisfy
the hunger we walked in with, but not
the hunger the sight of her
inspires us to take home.
 

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011

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Grace Bauer: “I am currently bent on surviving another winter in Nebraska, which might explain the longing for otherwise and elsewhere that keeps cropping up in my poems.”

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November 8, 2024

“Migration Ghazal” by Matt DhillonPosted by

Matt Dhillon

MIGRATION GHAZAL

My ship is two hands held together to cross the water.
What hope you carry, don’t spill a drop across the water.
 
If one spills out, we push his name like a prayer
into the palms of the dark, the body lost on the water.
 
Prayers we make into boats with the bowls of our hands
on the bones of our chests, to push one across the water.
 
Hands unlearn their work, relearn to feed us.
Each day a crossing, now toss on the water.
 
Like half-finished sentences, we move on unheard. 
Practice the words of that country across the water.
 
The ferryman of souls is crossing to the country past sleep.
All immigrants eventually reach his ship and ripple the last water.
 
What comes biting on a dark night like memories?
Hook one and pull the silverfish from the glossed water.
 
Migrants wash in the river, the words for things 
flake off, float like skins on top of the water.
 
In two hands I take you on the river of forgetting
Who am I, you ask in this country across the water.
 
Now we are no one. Mother, Father, Brother, Daughter,
all our names washed off on the water.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

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Matt Dhillon: “Immigration is a profound threshold to cross. I’ve been thinking a lot about crossings and how change comes to us with both growth and loss.”

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November 7, 2024

“Smoking Ceremony” by Hemat MalakPosted by

Hemat Malak

SMOKING CEREMONY

You call me arsonist, mad firefly:
our photos curl and crackle in the sink.
Those years together burn—smoke thick with sighs.
 
I watch the tendrils dance to cleanse the sky
which colours now in hues of rose and pink.
Call me artist—my madness paints goodbye
 
in letters on this canvas, nearly dry.
Make no mistake: this is forever-ink.
The years are burned, the smoke has choked our sighs.
 
The letters starburst into butterflies,
and here’s a toast to which we both can drink:
from arson’s match, we made two fireflies—
 
these children smelted from our mouths and eyes;
our love left bubbles as we watched it sink,
but years have burst into a thousand sighs.
 
There’s comfort as the seasons prophesize—
the vow of fall: to bloom again in spring.
No arsonist, that madness burnt me dry,
this smoke of years in flames to bless our sighs.
 

—from Prompt Poem of the Month
October 2024

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Prompt: Write a villanelle that mentions your favorite season. Make each refrain slightly different.

Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “This villanelle burns through turns of phrases with such elegance that we feel like we’re watching a chimney on a cold winter’s day. Hemat lights up the possibilities of language, showing us how a match struck in a slightly different way can entirely change the meaning of a line. The subtlety of ‘hues of rose and pink’ further highlights that distinction—as the two colors appear to be synonyms but their connotations beg to differ. With its brilliant twist from ‘arsonist’ to ‘artist,’ this poem will glow in our minds for many years to come.”

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November 6, 2024

“My Mother Cooks” by Gil ArzolaPosted by

Gil Arzola

MY MOTHER COOKS

Our last supper together was arroz con pollo. There was
no wine. We had no disciples. It was only my mother
and me in the small kitchen. It pleased her to serve me one more time.
Maybe she knew it was going to be our last.
 
My mother rose early that day.
She asked when I would arrive. She did not want to be late.
 
She made tortillas and set them as gently as newborn babies
on top of a cotton cloth where she covered
them to keep them warm. And
like the thousands of times since
she began cooking at eleven years old when she ran out of choices,
she measured nothing.
She had no recipe propped up to tell her how to make the dough,
how long to roll it, how much to make
so that it was always enough.
 
She tossed it together like her life
had been tossed. Like fall leaves and confetti.
Tossed.
She did not need instructions.
Her hands remembered how.
It stuck to her like a tattoo, like the gray in her hair or
the lines her life had carved into the corners of her eyes.
 
She could not tell you how
it had come to this.
She remembered.
That’s all.
 
We did not pray at our last supper.
Maybe she did.
In her head while I ate.
Maybe she did.
 
But I knew no prayers that fit.
And have learned none since.
At our last supper
she was two months short of ninety-three.
She would
be dead in one.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

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Gil Arzola: “Nobody cooks like your mother. Among the clearest of my childhood memories is the smell of arroz con pollo (rice and chicken) coming through the old screen door of the migrant cabin where we lived while working the fields. It was a special treat, and I mentioned that to my mother years later. On a visit to see her, she made it for me. It was our last visit, as it turned out, other than visits to the hospital a few months later. This poem was born of that.”

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November 5, 2024

“Election” by Matthew KingPosted by

Matthew King

ELECTION

On plywood walling off a stalled construction
site someone had scrawled: WHAT’S IT ALL WORTH
WITHOUT AN OPEN FREE AND FAIR ELECTION?
Behind it, water seeping from the earth
sought its equilibrium in the pit,
rising, falling, following the weather.
We never saw the message fade. Did it
require an answer? Was it merely clever?
A steel and see-through condo tower stands
there now, I guess—I couldn’t say which one—
to fill the hole and make no such demands
on passersby. The question’s day is done.
It always made us smile but now I doubt
we knew just what it was we smiled about.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Matthew King: “This poem refers to a bit of graffiti I saw many years ago, but the question it posed ironically—obviously, the real question is what’s it all worth with an open free and fair election?—is, for now, as pertinent as ever. This is what your open free and fair elections get you. What do you make of that?” (web)

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November 4, 2024

“Open Mic” by Preston WoodruffPosted by

Preston Woodruff

OPEN MIC

The girl with the guitar has a face as open
and bright as an April full moon until
she starts to sing. The lyrics spill out in words
a decade older than her seventeen years.
The guys in the backup band are old,
they’re friends of her musical mom,
but they love the girl, and know to stay
behind and underneath the voice.
She ends a busted-love song she wrote—
how does she know such blue thoughts?—with
a slow, spiraling diminuendo. The drummer
watches her eyes, and at the last possible instant
swishes a wire brush across his crash cymbal.
The silence that follows is the last note of the song.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians

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Preston Woodruff: “I loved performing, but the road wore me out, and anyway, job, family, money—you know the familiar story. I kept playing close to home, though: bass in a jazz trio, pit bands, and chamber orchestra; lute in a Renaissance consort, lounge-lizard solo guitar in restaurants and bars, lots of wedding receptions and one funeral. All fun. Some days I miss it.”

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