November 14, 2023

“Love of Distance” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

LOVE OF DISTANCE

He’s enchanted with the idea
of reaching through space,
wants me to wait by the window
while he climbs the far-off mountain,
sets up the light, flashes something back
in Morse code. He says we should begin
studying our dots and dashes, along with
smoke signals, the extravagantly long rolled r’s
of Spanish. Hand gestures of the deaf.
 

Or we could take the rim trail,
one of us staying on the southern lip
while the other heads north till our bodies
shrink to the size of tree-frogs. Then we can converse
across the canyon without effort, no need
to raise our voices. He is certain this will work,
that the atmosphere at these heights
will bear our words with a clarity
as yet unknown to us.
 
My faith in these things is weaker.
I dare not tell him the Far Eastern stories—
the one where the poet builds two houses
on opposite shores of the lake. Gives one
to his sweetheart, who he tells to go in,
take up dulcimer or needlework, learn to love
the lonely ways. Think of the surprise,
he says. One of our faces suddenly shining
between the black birds and reeds.
 

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

__________

Prartho Sereno: “When I first read that so much depended on a red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens, I breathed a sigh of relief. My inner whisperer seemed to know this kind of thing, but I had always felt her murmurings to be of no use. Now I could scramble through an odd labyrinth of life-hoops—psychologist, cab driver, head cook, single parent, housecleaner, palmist, phys. ed teacher, Poet in the Schools—with someone I could trust inside. She’s the one who writes my poems.” (web)

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November 13, 2023

“Ars Ecphrastica” by Matthew Buckley SmithPosted by

Matthew Buckley Smith

ARS ECPHRASTICA

for C.

Although your fingers and my eyes agree,
It is unheard of, Cameron, what you see—
 
Describing scenes of color, form, and light
Which you perceive by any means but sight.
 
We cannot know the god’s unheard-of head,
Protested Rilke, when he should have said
 
Unseen, because we hear of it from him
In carnal terms, becoming of a hymn
 
To any of those bad old gods, the kind
That loved man’s form but not his living mind,
 
Delighting in some tyrant’s blinding wrath,
Then disappearing in the aftermath.
 
 
 

Prompt: “I wrote this in response to one of two suggestions made to my writing group. I had been reading a lot of Horace, and at two different sessions I brought up the idea of imitating something he did in his odes. In one, I proposed that we each write a poem that argues with an existing poem. In another, I proposed that we each write a poem addressed to a friend. I cannot remember which prompt inspired this poem.”

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems

__________

Matthew Buckley Smith: “Every week, I meet for an hour by Zoom with two women I got to know through a poetry anthology we were all in. One of us supplies a prompt, and then we write for an hour in response. Sometimes the prompt is an image. Sometimes it’s a line from a book we’re reading. Sometimes it’s an idea drawn from an existing poem. I save the results of my efforts in a file that I examine some months later. Roughly one draft in ten is worth revising.” (web)

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November 12, 2023

“War Sonnet with a Simile Borrowed from Kyle Okoke’s ‘Matthew 6:28′” by Devon BalwitPosted by

Devon Balwit

WAR SONNET WITH A SIMILE BORROWED FROM KYLE OKOKE’S “MATTHEW 6:28”

Chest like a trapdoor and me a medic,
parachuting in, leaning over the body shattered
on the rubbled road, I listen to the heart ticking
like unexploded ordnance, hoping to delay the surd
that is death, to deny its nothingness purchase,
me a robber with my pressure bandages, codeine,
and comfort, my eight-week training scarcely
enough to differentiate me from the gawkers who lean
in to get a better view of someone else’s
tragedy. What can I do other than crudely
splint the broken bones, halt the pulse
of blood until the surgeon can do her work? Only
a stopgap, still I throw myself there,
where the line of being and not-being wavers.
 

—from Poets Respond
November 12, 2023

__________

Devon Balwit: “The first simile comes from Kyle Okoke’s poem ‘Matthew 6:28’ in this month’s Poetry magazine. It is for all those called to be first responders.” (web)

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November 11, 2023

“A Shipwrecked Person” by James TatePosted by

James Tate

A SHIPWRECKED PERSON

When I woke from my afternoon nap, I wanted
to hold onto my dream, but in a matter of seconds
it had drifted away like a fine mist. Nothing
remained; oh, perhaps a green corner of cloth
pinched between my fingers, signifying what?
Everything about the house seemed alien to me.
The scissors yawned. The plants glowed. The
mirror was full of pain and stories that made no
sense to me. I moved like a ghost through the rooms.
Stacks of books with secret formulas and ancient
hieroglyphic predictions. And lamps, like stern
remonstrances. The silverware is surely more
guilty than I. The doorknobs don’t even believe
in tomorrow. The green cloth is burning-up. I
toss it into the freezer with a sigh of relief.

—from Rattle #17, Summer 2002

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November 10, 2023

“Putting Together Ikea Furniture” by Clint MargravePosted by

Clint Margrave

PUTTING TOGETHER IKEA FURNITURE

Who had to die to get to this moment? 
Your ass planted on the ground 
of the back patio, 
putting together this cheap table 
and chairs from Ikea. 
 
Think of the wars that had to be fought, 
the bloodbaths, 
the overthrowing of kings and kingdoms. 
 
The loggers who cut the wood 
in the forests of Romania, 
and Lithuania and Latvia, 
and in Lowndes, Alabama. 
Or the young environmentalist 
tweeting from her wooden table 
about the dangers of deforestation. 
 
Think of the men and women sweating in factories 
in China and Vietnam and Malaysia and Myanmar, 
in Poland and North America. 
 
The workers who built the skyscrapers, 
harnessed on platforms 100 stories high, 
feet dangling over cities, 
so you can try to decipher these directions 
drawn up by some Swedish surrealist 
in a corporate high rise, 
eating meatballs at his desk. 
 
The welders who melted steel 
and shaped it and reshaped it 
into containers, 
the cranes that lifted those containers off ships, 
the longshoreman who unloaded the cargo 
at the port of Los Angeles, 
miles from where you live. 
 
Think of the men in yellow hardhats 
driving bulldozers over dirt, 
laying gravel and asphalt, 
tar on their shoes 
and under their fingernails 
and in their lungs and noses. 
 
The roads and freeways and overpasses, 
the bridges so trucks from the port 
can deliver this furniture 
to the warehouse, 
where other trucks will deliver 
it to your front door. 
 
Here, in this house that you rent,
think of the carpenters, 
the cement mixed for the foundation, 
the original plumbers and electricians 
older than your dead grandparents, 
where tonight you and Diliana 
will eat dinner in the backyard, 
the food she’s assembled 
on this table you’ve assembled, 
an open bottle of wine 
under a gorgeous June sky, 
think of the sacrifice it took 
to make this moment happen, 
the tightening of things, 
the plugging things in, 
the hammering things down 
to hold it all together.
 

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

__________

Clint Margrave: “I write poetry because I’m not good at fixing anything.” (web)

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November 9, 2023

“The Accordion” by Tammy GreenwoodPosted by

Tammy Greenwood

THE ACCORDION

The highlight of every Christmas was you climbing
the attic staircase, like a memory to your childhood,
carrying down the brown leather case that held
the pearl-keyed Titano accordion. Bought by your parents
the year you had rheumatic fever and told you’d never walk
again. We sat at your feet, waiting for the one song you learned
before you proved them wrong, as you squeezed life
into the empty vessel, exhaling “La Vie en rose.”
The year we had to honor your do not resuscitate wish,
there were no rescues, our breath only shallowing
as we tried to follow yours. All of us still as the air left the room.
Now I keep the leather case close, collecting dust beneath
my bed, knowing at any time, my arms wrapped around
leather and linen lungs, the music can be so easily revived.
 

—from Prompt Poem of the Month
October 2023

__________

Prompt: Pick an inanimate object and trace the evolution of your relationship with it throughout your life. Title it with the name of that object.

Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “One of the most bittersweet poems I’ve ever read, ‘The Accordion’ reaches a profound depth of longing within the small wishing well of an American sonnet. It has me dreaming of reviving the lives of those we’ve lost and remembering to play every instrument while we still can, and to do it together—especially as we head into the holiday season.”

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November 8, 2023

“Always Tender in the Wrong Places” by Laura RubyPosted by

Laura Ruby

ALWAYS TENDER IN THE WRONG PLACES

after Audre Lorde

I.
 
Two bears and an owl walk into a bar—
the beginning of a joke, maybe, 
or a dream. 
 
 
II.
 
Say the bar is not a bar but a hospital. The bears,
—one brown, one white—linger over a carcass
on the operating table. The grizzly claws away
the breasts, the polar bear stitches up the wounds. 
 
 
III.
 
The owl puts the carcass on a rotisserie, roasts
it over a fire. The carcass must be cooked 
before it is done, low and slow, till the meat 
is charred on the outside, pink all the way 
through.   
 
 
IV.
 
This will take weeks. 
 
 
V.
 
Sometimes, the carcass weeps. When the carcass 
weeps, the owl spits up a pellet of fur and bones. 
 
Look, clicks the owl. It could be worse.
 
 
VI.
 
It is.
 
 
VII.
 
A year later, in another hospital room, the carcass 
waits. Polar bears aren’t much for formalities, 
but it’s still a surprise when he whips aside the 
curtain, whips aside the gown. He scrawls all over 
the no-longer-breasts breasts, gnashing yellow teeth
in black gums. The meat is like rubber, he growls.
There are no leaves on these trees, no blooms on
the flowers, no give in the hide. 
 
 
VIII.
 
The bear says: this isn’t reconstruction 
but resurrection, grr grr. 
 
 
IX. 
 
The carcass has forgotten its own language,
speaks in grunts and clicks. It wants to kiss 
the lethal beak of the owl, lay its bald head 
in the mouth of the grizzly. Take the paw 
of the polar bear, smooth the spiky fist flat. 
Pluck the marker from his claws, draw them 
huge and primeval on the curve of a cave 
wall, restore them all to the wild ones 
they once were. 
 
 
 

Prompt: “I wrote this poem in response to Rick Barton’s ‘hermit crab poem’ prompt suggested by another poet in my workshop. According to Barton, the ‘hermit crab’ is a type of poem in which one finds another type of writing—a recipe, a field guide, lab reports, etc.—and uses the form to ‘contain’ your own poetic material. I chose to write a poem in the shape of a list.”

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems

__________

Laura Ruby: “The good thing about poetry is that subjects are everywhere. The bad thing about poetry is that subjects are everywhere; how do you catch a poem before it flies away without you? I find that writing to prompts helps me focus when I’m overwhelmed, when I’m having trouble sorting out what I think, when I’ve been circling and circling a subject but haven’t been able to capture any particular truth about it. Sometimes just challenging myself with a prompt—write a poem from the most incredible newspaper headline you can find!—can shake me out of a slump. Sometimes, the prompt has to come from someone else, someone who is better able than I to see what I’ve been missing.” (web)

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