Search Results for: Pool Head

September 26, 2020

“To Build a Mother Who Stands like a House” by Cassidy LewisPosted by

Cassidy Lewis (age 15)

TO BUILD A MOTHER WHO STANDS LIKE A HOUSE

Love your neighbor as yourself.
—Galatians 5:14

I think if God and I lived in a house together, we’d never
really sleep. Because I would want to ask a thousand
questions and God would want to listen, droopy eyed
in the corner of my bedroom, head tilted to the side
to make like He was drifting off. Eating fruit from Eve’s
tree to stay awake, floating on a hammock of clouds,
hands tucked together, like the house He’s built for us
is Heaven. But if you and God lived in a house,

it would be constructed by Solomon and Isaiah and Josh,
written onto the street as if it was the books of the Old
Testament, and you’d keep the doors shut because nobody
should come inside. I think the two of you would eat supper
together in the dining room and God would storytell
about Heaven. About how it breathes, the way it opens
and closes like the wings on and off of an Angel’s back.
You are my mother but the night you introduced me

to Jesus, I met His eyes and the words felt wrong. I imagine
God as a hotel. As the different suites He could be, the furniture.
As the little yellow lights that reflect off balcony windows
during the night time. Think of Him as the swimming pool,
as the water, the tile. Bath linen, bed. Imagine Him as the wood
of a reception desk, as the receptionist. A keycard held in each palm
to hand to His guests. I’d like to see this God. Like to touch
Him how you touch the silver crucifix of Jesus hanging

above my nightstand. His hips curled in, lean. Hold Him
while you preach to me about love and hate and all the things
that fill us. The things that curate sin. Pride, envy, anger.
This is where I write we disagree. Because while your door
may close for the people you dislike in God’s name, His will
remain open. Yours is steeled shut, and His is revolving,
and mine is thin and transparent like glass. I sit in Church
and look at God standing on the stage by the pastor. A reminder
that He sees and loves everybody. That He too doesn’t want

closed-mindedness in our religion. And maybe you don’t see God
but His shadow, where it slips behind the stage curtains to hide.
Less God and more silhouette. I think He wouldn’t buy a house,
but build one. And it’d be made the same way He is. Bare footed,
sheet wrapped from shoulders to hips. Tall, head peeking down
at the two of us from His home up in Heaven. A knowing smile
growing from His thin lips. Pull off the road, I know that you’re tired.
Come to the hotel, there’s a room for you waiting.

—from 2020 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Cassidy Lewis: “To me, poetry is a way to use my head as an outlet for expression—inside I’ve always been able to find words and images that can be blended together to describe almost anything. Not only feelings I’ve experienced, but things I’ve seen and experienced, even the most mundane, can be poetic in different ways. Through poetry, I can look into others’ heads too, and for a moment, see the world through a pair of eyes different from my own.”

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April 20, 2020

“After the Affair” by Karen BenkePosted by

Karen Benke

AFTER THE AFFAIR

Each day he left our shallow bed at sunrise.
All that remained: the black snake lie.
Yes, he remembered his watch, the cream for his coffee.
He unloaded the dishwasher, carried the recycling to the curb.
How can you say I’m not here for you?
The house creaked quiet.
The woman who was me curled under the stiff sheet of another day.
His car accelerated up the driveway.
On my side of the whale-huge bed, the woman remained.
Jays squawked. The cat cried for food.
The child watched another cartoon.
Walking to meet the carpool, I explained
1+2=3. And two plus one also equals three.
The child held my hand. Don’t cry, Mommy.
Afterward, I kept my eyes open to see underneath
the lies the woman who was me could no longer keep—
The bite reached flesh, bone, heart, head.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

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Karen Benke: “I studied with Kim Addonizio in 1993 while pursuing my master’s degree at the University of San Francisco. Kim is generous, tender, tough, and accurate with her honesty. She made a better poet out of me by her example, by all the detailed ways she shows up to see and capture the world’s heartbreak and grit. She taught me how to rigorously question if what is being included in the container of a poem is truly necessary. As I edit, I can still hear her say, ‘Here’s a needless piece of information.’” (web)

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February 1, 2020

“Self-Portrait By Someone Else” by Courtney KampaPosted by

Courtney Kampa

SELF-PORTRAIT BY SOMEONE ELSE

The afternoon we traced our 2nd grade bodies
with poster paint, legs V-shaped on paper
like the outlines of victims at a crime scene,
I was the only girl stuck partnered with a boy—
his fists filthy from prying back scalps
of onion grass, bug shells crushed up in his teeth
because he’d liked the sound. He refused
all paint-colors but blue. Leaned over me,
complaining loudly to his friends. Then his lip,
heavy with focus. And the red wing
of his tongue. Dragging his paintbrush
like a match in a room of gasoline. The week before
Debbie Kaw passed a note saying babies
came from standing too close to a boy,
or if one sweat on you, or spat
in your direction. So the girls called it brave, what I did,
letting one trace me. And I let them think so—
let them run ahead in the carpool line,
the blood still returning to my knees.
Let my mother hang it full length on the refrigerator.
The white space something I’d stepped from.
Its thick blue line sort of wobbly
between my thighs, where his hands shook.
In the mornings my little sister would stand
on one foot, looking at it. Her groggy pajamas.
Her hands playing in her lunatic hair.

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

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Courtney Kampa: “One of the many 23-year-olds in New York City, I’m from Virginia and miss it.” (web)

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October 18, 2019

“Star Signs” by Catherine PondPosted by

Catherine Pond

STAR SIGNS

Luna sits on the bed, taller than last summer, tan legs
dangling over the edge. You’re a Scorpion, like me,
she says, when I tell her my birthday. That’s right,
I say. At school in Oaxaca, she has a nemesis
named Oasis, pronounced Oh-ah-sees. She tells me
about it, bouncing up and down on the worn mattress.
Before they were enemies, she says, they were
best friends. Maybe you’ll be friends again one day,
I suggest, but she shakes her head. I don’t think so.
She tells me about her other friends, Sofia, Lucia.
I’m popular, Luna explains, and with a flush I remember
what those first loves felt like: all the girls I knew
by heart and wanted so badly to impress.
The pair of black patent leather sneakers
my mother bought me, which squeaked when I walked
and which I was too shy to wear until one day
I got up the nerve, and Kelsey Tucker, the most popular
girl in fifth grade, said, Cool sneakers, and suddenly I was in.
By middle school it was all over. I was too nerdy,
too desperate for attention from my teachers.
My mother bought my clothes one size too big
so I would always be comfortable, and when
I ran into my old friends in the bathroom,
sucking in their stomachs to get their pants
zipped up all the way, I was embarrassed.
I still wore jeans from Limited Too that sagged
in the butt, and t-shirts that announced all the tourist
destinations my father had taken us the previous summer:
Niagara Falls! said one. Luray Caverns! said another.
The other girls didn’t wear t-shirts anymore.
They wore halters so you could see their bras.
They liked being looked at. Didn’t they know boys
would hurt them, I wondered. Didn’t they know
that boys thought awful thoughts. I knew it
without being told, and wore big sweaters
so they wouldn’t look at my chest. Luna kicks at the bed.
Are you listening? she says, and I tune back in
to a story about a beach trip with her friends,
and the boys she hates. When I mention
my own boyfriend her face twists and her blue eyes
go steely. Who is he? she asks, barely veiling
her jealousy. You’d like him, I say, but it’s clear
she’s already made up her mind. I’ll be thirteen
in November, she says, eager to change the subject.
Maybe you can come for my birthday party.
I imagine boarding a plane, cruising south over
sun-drenched hills, red flowers dotting the valley.
Luna in a blue dress. That would be nice, I say.
Through the window behind her, the lake glimmers.
Rows of apple trees on the opposite shore
glow in the light. I don’t ask her
if she remembers the move to Mexico,
the day her mother boarded the plane and flew her
away from her father. In the few months each summer
he has custody, I don’t blame him for trying to win her
over, giving her the biggest bedroom
in the house, building her a pool in the middle
of the orchard, buying her whatever she wants.
Though her eyes are set wide in her face,
and mine are close together, though she is small
for twelve, and I was tall, we look alike.
We have the same broad nose and blue eyes,
as if we were burned by the same star
when we were born. I take a photo of her
standing in the bedroom with the pink wallpaper.
The lake ripples like a silver backdrop,
the kind they drape behind you for a school photo.
Later, we play Scrabble against “the adults.”
She and I are a team, and when we lose
she flips the board and storms out of the room.
Who does that remind you of, my father says,
and laughs. I find her by the water, sulking,
and in an attempt to cheer her up, find myself
making promises I know I can’t keep.
I’ll come visit for your birthday, I say.
I’ll write you every month. But when I fly back
to Los Angeles, I forget to write. Life tumbles in.
It’s September when the earthquake hits Oaxaca.
My phone buzzes in the silent room, my heart jolts
when I see the headline. Biggest earthquake
in a century, it says. I text everyone I can think of,
then move through my apartment as if I’m the one
darkness has settled down on, waiting to hear
that Luna is safe. An hour passes. Then another.
What is it like, I wonder, when that first bolt
breaks loose off the coast? What does she think
when the Earth doesn’t stop, but keeps buckling
beneath her, and she wakes inside the full force
of that rift, so sudden, so deep, and does she know,
though she is only a day older, how from then on
everything will be different.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

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Catherine Pond: “Scorpio is a water sign, and I wrote this poem for my cousin Jurni so she will remember that being ruled by water is ultimately a gift, though the depth of it can sometimes overwhelm you.” (web)

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August 9, 2019

“Two Lovers Standing on the East River Promenade …” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

TWO LOVERS STANDING ON THE EAST RIVER PROMENADE, THE WHITE ONE CAREFULLY PICKING THINGS OUT OF THE UNCOMBED AFRO OF THE BLACK ONE

The clouds over them were simple, perfect and white
like those that second graders draw over rooftops.
A plane descended towards LaGuardia Airport,
so slowly it seemed suspended above their heads,
almost as if the passengers had asked the pilots to idle,
while they passed around binoculars to look at their two
fellow men planted below, one looking for something in the other.
The white one stood firmly behind the black one in the same
patch of earth while runners, walkers and parents with strollers
swerved to avoid them. They appeared to have no awareness
of the movement surrounding them, not even the crisp, fall breeze
leaving the river and blowing their shirts around like the flags
standing outside the United Nations building farther north.
The water next to the promenade flowed in its usual ambivalence,
going upriver one moment, downriver the next, sometimes whirlpooling
salty water from the Atlantic Ocean peppered with fresh water
from the Harlem River, a blue gray green mixture masquerading,
passing as a river. Minutes ticked by. Neither said a word to the other,
as the white one peered through bushy, ebony hair,
while the black one stood with his eyes closed.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

__________

Marvin Artis: “I think one of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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July 31, 2019

“Misreading Darwin” by Chris AndersonPosted by

Chris Anderson

MISREADING DARWIN

He lived not only his own life,
he lived also in the lives of others.
—Janet Browne, Charles Darwin

I. Chemistry, the Cultural Approach

We didn’t have to do experiments, we just had to think about them,
and that’s my method still.
I don’t like specimens. I like shelving. Not collecting but collections.
The way Darwin said he abhorred the sea, every wave and slap,
the whole five years, but loved his tiny cabin beneath the poop deck,
with its nooks
and crannies and clever drawers, though of course
he was really out there, too, scrambling over rocks and skinning iguanas.
He could do it all: geology, zoology, botany.
Back home in County Kent he spent the mornings in his study
surrounded by his books and instruments.
He loved to write on foolscap. Sometimes a sentence. Sometimes a word.
He wasn’t an atheist. He was just very, very slow.
He was polite.
I am the vine, you are the branches, as Buzz Aldrin said from the moon,
after the Eagle landed.
But this was off-mic, of course. He was quoting Jesus.

 

II. Cartoon Eyes

Darwin wrote sitting on a chair
with a board spread across his lap.

He was always sending his children out
to collect beetles and report on the pigeons,
and he was always asking farmers
what they had seen and what they knew,
and shopkeepers, and the postman.

Anybody. He was interested.

I have a laptop, of course,
and so I often write in chairs.
Yesterday what I saw was a bushtit
fluttering in the ivy,
and when I went to investigate
I saw that it couldn’t fly anymore.
It was injured and hiding.

It looked right at me, blinking
the two black dots of its eyes,
and as it blinked
nothing else on its body moved.
It was otherwise still.

I think it knew me.
I think it knew it was dying.

 

III. Addendum to My First Poem about Darwin

When I say that Darwin wasn’t an atheist
I just mean that he seems like such a nice man.
He was shy. He was sad. He was flatulent—
that’s why he always excused himself after dinner.
He spent eight years studying barnacles,
everything about them, until he was the world’s expert
on barnacles, all the different kinds,
with all their hard shells and their soft, creamy bodies.
He loved to walk in his garden,
admiring the trees, but only at the appointed time.
His house was the ship and his wife
was the captain and he was the voyager,
alone with his thoughts every day, filling page after page.
The children told time by the creak of his door—
though they were always racing in, too,
stealing a rock or a feather, and he let them,
and sometimes he played with them or took them
in his arms and kissed them on the ears,
and when his little Annie died he so forgot himself
in a letter to a friend he called her a little angel.
An angel. He just couldn’t believe
she was gone. He just wasn’t thinking.

 

IV. On the Surface

Darwin married his cousin, Emma,
and later came to love her dearly.

I met Barb in the band—she played the drums
and I played the clarinet—
and I loved her from the start.

After their second child died, the youngest,
a boy, Darwin bought a billiard table.
He researched it thoroughly first
and bought the best, and he liked to play
as he was thinking,
banking shots off the soft, velvet edges.

My brother and I used to play pool
down at Gazebos, in a shadowy corner
beneath a big hanging light,
the felt a brilliant, emerald green,
but I never sat at the bar until a week
after Barb and I were married.

I’d just turned twenty-one and Dad
bought me a beer
and we sat and talked. It was surreal.
It just didn’t seem possible.
Everything was still on the surface.

 

V. My Mystery Bird

At Nestucca once I saw a Swainson’s Thrush sing,
but I had to live there first, for a month, in the alder above the bay.
It was chilly and damp in the morning, and I was very lonely,
but I had my little coffee pot, and my Post-it-Notes
flew like flags, and finally I saw it happening, early one evening,
lit by the sun, the way they tip back their heads
and let the song pour forth, their soft throats bubbling.
Now there’s this mystery bird in my neighbor’s yard across the street,
singing in the blackberries. It could be
a Black-throated Gray Warbler, or a Hermit Warbler, or even
a Townsend’s, but there’s no way to know unless I actually see it,
unless I can stand on the road and wait,
looking into the thorns, while the cars drive by and the world goes on,
and I do. Minutes at a time. I want to see this one, too.
The way my brother says he feels the wine slide down his throat
when he drinks from the cup at mass.
The way he says he can feel it: that warmth. That burning.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

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Chris Anderson: “I’ve been reading a lot lately about science and religion and about environmental theology, and that led me to Darwin and to this wonderful biography by Janet Browne. It’s so beautifully written, and Darwin comes out of it as such a fascinating English-country gentlemen. I found myself oddly identifying with him, even though—and then exactly because—I realized that in the poems I started to write, in this sequence, I was getting him wrong, sort of turning him into a believer when he wasn’t. That became the theme of the sequence. Darwin became a way for me to explore the border between science and religion in myself.” (web)

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July 3, 2019

“Red Brick Town” by Rayon LennonPosted by

Rayon Lennon

RED BRICK TOWN

I roll to Ohio
To find my sister
Who exists
In a red brick town
As flat as her affect.
In the condo, her three
Kids pool around her. I wave
To them as the stranger
I am. They don’t wave
Back, two teenage
Girls, one tall as Naomi
Campbell, the other
About half white; and one
Boy who is in love
With breaking the law. “Nice
To see you,” I say. “I’m sorry,”
Sis says. “What
Do you want?”
I say, “To see you.”
She sends the kids
Out to spend time
With water guns
Or their boyfriends.
“Sit down,” she says.
I don’t. The blue leather
Couch looms
Ominous as the hurricane
Heart of the Caribbean
Sea. “I hear
You’re a therapist,”
She begins. I nod.
“And you’re a nurse,”
I say. She’s in a light
Bluish outfit. “Did you
Figure out that
You’re gay yet?” she smiles.
“Don’t be childish,”
I let out. She says,
“You won’t find
Pity here.”
The carpet looks
Like an overused golf
Course. I pray her therapist
Told her she’s borderline.
She grins. The heat in the living
Room inches toward
Insufferable. “Life’s not
Been easy,” I say
Now. “We got here
The hard way. We are
Barrel children, after all.”
She nods. She looks
Like depression. I remember
Her constantly trying
To die as a kid
In Jamaica, threatening
To run out in front
Of a truck or jumping
Off the stone wall
Into the speeding brown
Sludge of the gully during
A storm. All after dad
Left us for America.
Her face is brittle
From too many slaps
And punches from
Men who loved her.
She’s fatter after
Too many babies
And too much greasy
Food. Scars from a recent
House fire litter her arms
And legs. Here stands
The damaged gal
Who used to pummel
Me until my nose streamed
Red. The sun
Wants to burn through
A window. “I remember
The first time
You called me
A whore,” she says.
“I was 12. You were 7.”
It was after church
On a Sunday in front
Of our old house
In Jamaica. “It made
Me want to die.
My own brother
Calling me trash.
I know I hurt you
Too. I hit you
For no reason.
I let you fall off
The bed and knock
Your head on the concrete
Floor. I couldn’t
Catch you. We couldn’t
Afford a crib. And mom’s
Bed was too high.
You were always
Smart but never
Quite right. I’m
Sorry. You could’ve
Been a supernova
Genius. I myself
Wasn’t the same after
Dad left.” Cars scream
In the distance. “It’s okay.
You’re a queen,
Sis,” I insist. She says,
“Thanks. But don’t
Lie. I’m sick
Too. I couldn’t stop
That freak older
Boy from fucking
With you under a bridge
When you were too
Young to know what
Was going on.”
The kids do sound
Like a war outside.
I say, “You didn’t
Know until I told
You afterwards,
And while you closed
The windows for
The oncoming
Rain, you cried.
That meant a lot
To me.” I hug her for
Perhaps the first
Time and say, “I love
You.” She stops
Breathing, and her
Body steels up.
“You don’t mean
That,” she says. “I
Love you,” I say
Again as the kids
Push open the door.

—from Rattle #63, Spring 2019

__________

Rayon Lennon: “My work operates in that magical gray area between poetry and fiction. For this poem, I wanted to dramatize a number of the reasons behind the recent outrage over children being separated from their parents at the border. In the news, the focus has been placed on children and how being separated from their families adversely affects them—while their parents hunt for the American dream. You don’t have to pick a side on this issue to empathize with the children. This poem widens the scope on the issue—by exploring what happens generally when parents leave their children behind to pursue the American dream. My father left Jamaica when I was born to work on apple farms in Connecticut. His departure decimated the family. He overstayed his visa and did not return to Jamaica for several years (he returned briefly after becoming a U.S. resident; he and my mother eventually divorced because of the long separation). I was six and my sister was around eleven years old when our father left for good. She changed the day he left and has never been the same. My relationship with her suffered because of this. This poem—an imagined journey to see my sister—attempts to address and repair the harm done. I think I’ve only hugged my sister once. It was the day after my wedding. It still shocks me how shocked she was when I pulled her in for a long hug. It made me sad then to think about all the love that didn’t exist between us.” (web)

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