January 28, 2024

“A Skeptic’s Guide to Relationship Science” by Dick WestheimerPosted by

Dick Westheimer

A SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO RELATIONSHIP SCIENCE

Deb and I lay in bed last night skin to skin. I think my hand was on her thigh and hers caressed my chin, maybe thumbed my earlobe like she sometimes does. We talked, again, about “love languages,” how she likes to give little treasures and wants me to be more attentive to her lists. Like today, her cellphone wouldn’t sync. She needs help with it. She reminds me I still haven’t hung Jeff’s picture in the rec-room. I know Deb’s notebook is full of to-dos for me, all dated, some starred in red pen. There are too few checked off. I tap my fingertips, one by one, feather-light on the small of her back. She sighs.
 
I love
her touch
typing
 
Today I read to Deb from a new study. “Love Languages,” it says, “are not supported by empirical data.” (One of my Love Languages must be “empirical data.”) She tells me about a conversation she had with our friend Claire. They were walking along Barton Pond in Ann Arbor. Deb recalls wearing new blue walking shoes, the ones she now dons to work in the garden. It must have been thirty years ago, she says. Claire’s man Paul hadn’t read the Love Languages book either.
 
growing old
we remember
different things
 
I always wake later than Deb. This morning I find a note taped to my computer keyboard: “Kitchen Counter,” it read, written in aqua-marine script. I’d left the remains of my dinner fixings and now they stuck like glue to the old Formica. We often prepare and eat different meals—mine always with brown rice and beans and cooked greens, Deb’s according to her mood. On the table where I sit to eat there’s a note rubber-banded to the tamari bottle: “PLEASE, Return Me To The Shelf” it reads in bold black marker. As I clean the counter, Deb squeezes by. Her bottom brushes mine, comfortably, for sure.
 
our kitchen too small
to miss her
 

—from Poets Respond
January 28, 2024

__________

Dick Westheimer: “The headline, ‘Fans shrug off study debunking love languages,’ was catnip for me. My wife was an early reader of Gary Chapman’s best seller and a believer, and more than occasionally speaks of our differences as measured by the ‘love languages’ construct. Of course I had to read the study! (She might say that referring to ‘studies’ is one of my love languages.) And, of course we both know after 44 years of what Pastor Chapman would call ‘incompatible’ love languages that they are not predictive of a long-sustaining relationship—like the study shows.” (web)

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January 27, 2024

“Not Everything I Do Is Magic” by David M. DeLeonPosted by

David M. deLeon

NOT EVERYTHING I DO IS MAGIC

Consider, Sally: the way the sun shines laterally
below stormclouds. And the clipped exuberance of green.
And there’s everything that passes by in a single
still moment, there’s the messy kanji of branches,
the superscript of birds. There’s that warmth that someone
you don’t mind sitting there left on the seat before
you sat on it. Lots of little things not worth talking about.
If I said it’s all crap I’d be lying. But I’m lying anyway.
I didn’t do any of that. Someone fell off the rafters
of an imaginary barn and he wore a robe of clean red
and he landed in a daze and, having been sleeping, woke up.
He walked around the imaginary barn and counted the timber
supports and heard the wrens in their hidden nests. Why
did he fall from the rafters? Magic. What were the wrens?
Magic. Who is he? Not magic. The barn falls away
and we can see fields of both green and red and the sky is blue
bordering grey, a color that contains its own promised
color. Sally, there just ain’t enough words to tell even one
story, to tell you even who you are in this, or who I am, or
why the wrens seek warmth and not freedom and are now
trapped in one man’s red-cloaked imagination. I ask you
why are you here? and you just listen, listen on, because
you know more than I do. You know that the little upward bend
of the voice at the end of a question isn’t a waiting pause,
it’s a little hill cliff where we stop and look around and wait
for some clue from the landscape to tell us soon where oh where
oh where are we now that we are here, please tell me.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008

__________

David M. deLeon: “I don’t know anyone named Sally. Yet there she is in more than one poem, not doing anything but listening to me while I throw things together, trying to cobble up some sort of ladder to see out with. And I keep apologizing to her, over and over, because she knows me well enough. Everything’s magic but the magician.” (web)

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January 26, 2024

“Leaf Removal” by Al OrtolaniPosted by

Al Ortolani

LEAF REMOVAL

I listen to my wife on the phone
explaining to Leaf Removal, Inc. 
how we just can’t 
pick up the leaves anymore.
It’s getting to that point she says
that we need someone, which really
isn’t true because we could slide
down the hill on our heels, rake
the leaves into piles, douse them
with charcoal lighter, and set
them ablaze. Then we’d just need
a metal tined rake to lean on,
a little luck to keep the house
from going up in flames, and with
the garden hose uncoiled, nozzle
dribbling like a mouth, watch
last year turn to smoke, 
a slip, an ass tumble. Instead, 
two rabbits leap out of the leaves,
zig zagging ahead of the dog
who forever believes he’s a hunter
with sharp white teeth and 
the speed to stay stride for stride
with the memory of himself.
 

—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023

__________

Al Ortolani: “Lately, whenever I invoke the Muse for inspiration, she gives me poems from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Way back to childhood. Even if I don’t want to go in this direction, since the past is the past, old hat as they say, I know that rejecting the Muse can end up in something like poetic impotence. So I follow her lead, and dig around through images I should have sold at garage sales. Probably, there’s a lesson here about knowing thyself, remembering and learning, even when you’ve tried to forget.” (web)

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January 25, 2024

“Watch This!” by Tristan RothPosted by

Cold Sun by Jeanne Wilkinson, sepia photograph of an abandoned shopping cart in a snowy landscape

Image: “Cold Sun” by Jeanne Wilkinson. “Watch This!” was written by Tristan Roth for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

__________

Tristan Roth

WATCH THIS!

You captured the whole thing on the flippy-est dumb phone,
before you got smart. Fourteen felt like the un-freest zone
 
of youth: can’t drive, can’t drink, can’t rub two nickels,
can’t march to the beat of your harmonious own.
 
That winter of fourteen, you three trudged through snow,
pushing a Safeway shopping cart up the bunniest slope,
 
where the interstate goes under the canyon road. With temps
in the teens, you played Rochambeau, with the runniest nose.
 
Chomping at the bit, Jake always threw rock.
You always threw scissors. You were the cunningest one.
 
But Tristan was a lame-o poet, who lived life on paper.
“Me?” he said, voice squeaking in the jumpiest tone.
 
You were complete dicks back then, scared shitless of being
called chicken, charlatans strutting around the unknown,
 
your cockscombs uncolored by the foghorned winter sun.
Jake did a DX crotch chop. You were the scummiest clone,
 
You said Suck it! like Triple H and called him a pussy.
You mocked him like girls with your honey-est moans.
 
He climbed in, then dropped, the doppler sound of his voice.
“Watch this!” Tristan said, before breaking his funniest bone.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2023, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There are so many elements of ‘Watch This!’ that I enjoyed, admired, and was moved by. The voice feels true to the way teenagers actually think and speak, and this is reinforced by the repetition of creative ‘-est’ words throughout the poem: ‘the flippy-est dumb phone,’ ‘the un-freest zone.’ I had to read some of the phrases a few times because they were so unexpected and satisfying: ‘cockscombs uncolored by the foghorned winter sun.’ The scene works well placed into Jeanne Wilkinson’s bleak, evocative image–one can imagine a trio of directionless teenage boys, riddled with hidden insecurities and secret fears, scattered across Wilkinson’s desolate winter landscape, ‘pushing a Safeway shopping cart up the bunniest slope.’ And finally, there’s the encompassing fact that this is simply a gorgeous poem. It’s no small feat to write a ghazal that flows naturally and feels entirely authentic (believe me, I’ve tried), and Tristan Roth makes it look easy.”

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January 24, 2024

“Nicest” by Michael MarkPosted by

Michael Mark

NICEST

Mindy didn’t like me like me, I knew. 
Even when she put her hand on my thigh, 
slid it close to my dick, squeezed it in 
front of Brian—I forget his last name 
but not his face, some beard straggling 
his chin, sideburns already, diseased 
leather jacket, garbage truck voice, 
his 6 inches on me, his shoving me, 
and all his—then everyone’s—names 
for me. She liked him that way. I knew 
they’d been to second and were heading 
to third, his dirty fingers sliding under 
her jeans, her panties, her writhing, moaning, 
digging her nails into not me—she rubbed,
slung her arm around my shoulders when 
he called me that, like my father did, 
and my mother, though she’d say it worried, 
her voice like cried-in tissues, Are you …? 
You’re not? Mindy leaned her head to mine, 
her hair on my cheek, pushed them into me—
her woman breasts—voted best in 8th grade, 
including the teachers, according to me 
and my friends. We voted on everything 
from the cheap seats—smartest, dumbest, 
worst, most hated, nicest—pushed them 
into my side, chest, by my chin. They 
were strong and soft and it made Brian 
pull back from us like he’d been punched 
in his face. I knew she gave him a look: leave 
him alone or you aren’t touching kissing 
sucking on these, which made him want to 
kill me more, made him scream animal 
in the yard. I saw him push her against 
the fence. I did nothing—biggest pussy-
coward in the world award—watched her 
shove him back, flip her finger and pull 
her shirt up then down fast and laugh 
and they hugged and kissed long, hard 
and soft like in the movies and I thought 
he’s such a stupid loser who’ll wind up dead 
in the gutter after high school. I knew 
she liked him liked him. She couldn’t help it. 
 

—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023

__________

Michael Mark: “I get lost all the time. Poems are my compass. That’s not a metaphor, okay, but only half.” (web)

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January 23, 2024

“Confluence of Rivers and Mouths” by Laren McClungPosted by

Laren McClung

CONFLUENCE OF RIVERS AND MOUTHS

Today I saw a woman on Spring Street
with two black spaniels. She was crouching
and whispering to them. The dogs
took turns licking the woman on the mouth.
This woman’s mouth was its own world.
There are many worlds. We can enter them.
I read that Frydek-Mistek is a natural gate
into the mountains. One river empties
into the mouth of another. I imagine you
singing your nightingale song back
in D.C. I forget little things. This is a way
of surviving. I make imprints in the snow
in my dreams aggressively, practice
my blues-scales, collapse bridges,
converse with my grandmother, walk
into the water and keep walking.
I don’t know how surviving things can
better me, but I have many secrets.
And secrets, I’m learning, are like sheets,
or a shroud wrapped so tight it seems
impossible to find the opening to get out.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

__________

Laren McClung: “Lately I’ve been reading the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. She was part of a movement called Acmeism, which formed as a reaction against symbolism. The movement was concerned with poetry that moves through the use of association. Association opens ways between worlds, like the intersection of consciousness and subconsciousness, how one sound or image or thought conjures another entirely unrelated, like montage, like dreaming.”

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January 22, 2024

“Surrender” by Rachel MallalieuPosted by

Rachel Mallalieu

SURRENDER

Patients crowd my dreams 
demanding to be seen 
and saved.
 
When I work, they clog 
the waiting room and die 
in hallways.
 
At the beginning of the pandemic, 
we began observing a moment 
of silence each time someone died. 
 
I usually placed my hand
upon their shoulders
and thought this was a life. 
 
Last week, when a woman’s heart
stopped outside of CAT scan, 
a nurse straddled
 
the gurney and started pumping
her chest. It didn’t work. 
Well shit, the nurse said, 
 
now I’m all sweaty.
No one stopped or bowed 
their head. 
 
Today, in the winter woods, 
only the deer’s split 
tracks mar the mud-strewn path. 
 
The trees sway with the knife-
edged wind and creak
like rusted hinges. 
 
Around the bend, two swans 
paddle in a January pond.
The dog gallops ahead—
 
where the boulder bears a coat
of moss—his tail a white flag 
waving surrender. 
 

—from Rattle #82, Winter 2023

__________

Rachel Mallalieu: “As an emergency physician, I am forever hoping for things to go back to ‘the way they were.’ The pandemic, however, exposed and exacerbated longstanding issues such as emergency room boarding and the lack of a medical safety net for many. Now we are also severely understaffed. Many days, we do not have the nurses and techs needed to safely staff an ER. Medical staff is burning out at alarming rates and patients are suffering. I don’t know the answer, but something has to give.” (web)

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