November 14, 2024

Eric Kocher

MOUNTAIN LAKE

The next day I wake up and my wife
Is coming into the hotel room
 
And the first thing she tells me is that she found
A secret garden, which are her actual words,
 
Where she sat and absorbed as much sunlight
As she could, and then the second thing
 
She tells me is that she is pregnant, again,
That assuming nothing goes wrong,
 
Our daughter, who is on the other side
Of the country, is going to be a big sister.
 
I say I think I am still dreaming, probably,
But not in that cliché sense
 
Of life being somehow hazy or surreal,
But rather that words she is saying,
 
The order of them, seem more like something
Someone would say in a dream,
 
Especially the secret garden thing,
But minus me now saying
 
That I felt like I was dreaming,
Which is a near guarantee that I am awake.
 
As we say this, I realize I had already known
On some level but I had been trying to pretend
 
Like I didn’t know, partly because I didn’t want
To get my hopes up,
 
And partly because I knew that when I actually knew it,
When I knew it for real
 
It would lead me to knowing
Too many other things,
 
And then, when we knew it together, when we started
Saying it out loud, the meanings would snowball
 
Into bigger meanings, and then we would
Have to start making real decisions. First,
 
We decide the best thing to do with this new
Information is to go for a hike, as we had planned,
 
So, we drive to a trail called Mountain Lake
Which, we agreed, are two of the best
 
Geological features, independent of each other,
So what better place could we be without compromise.
 
After we decide this, all around us
Are these dizzyingly old trees,
 
western redcedar, Douglas fir, western hemlock,
All climbing one, two hundred feet
 
Into the air, and the air itself so very quiet,
Soft almost, making space for whatever
 
We have to say, which is a lot, so we say everything
We can, starting with the obvious stuff
 
Like who we think this new person might be,
What we might call them,
 
How tired everyone is going to be again,
Before moving onto the other stuff,
 
The fragility of it all, how the little patterns
We’ve managed to summon will change,
 
That our daughter’s world
Will simultaneously expand forever
 
And collapse inward, both a new galaxy
And a black hole, and that neither of us
 
Know how to say any of this to her.
Beside us, we can’t decide if the lake
 
Is green or blue, nor what determines
The greenness or blueness of any given lake.
 
Its chemical composition, maybe,
The algae and other organisms living in the lake,
 
Their eating and shitting
And synthesizing each other, maybe,
 
The trees blanketing the surrounding mountains,
How the light is refracting and diffusing
 
Among them reciprocally, maybe,
Some or none or all of these things together.
 
The guide on the whale-watching tour
Explained that orcas live in matriarchal
 
Societies, that they are among the few other
Beings on the planet who experience menopause,
 
Which is important because it creates space
For matriarch to teach the new mothers
 
And their babies how to hunt and play and be.
Explained this way, everything seems very clear,
 
As if we live within some order or logic that permeates
The way that life unfolds, like we are surrounded
 
Always by helpful explanations
Of what it is we are doing here,
 
If only we have the time and attention
To understand them.
 
When I ask my wife what kind of matriarch
She wants to be, she says a fancy one
 
Who surrounds herself with fancy things.
I know that this isn’t what she means,
 
But for a moment I feel very fancy, or that maybe
I might one day be a fancier version of myself.
 
The forest seems fancier, now,
And the quiet air, and the mountain, and the lake.
 
And I remember this pattern, too,
That a small thing can radiate outward, change
 
Everything around it.
My wife touches her hand to her stomach
 
And says that this trip was supposed to be her break
From being a parent,
 
And we keep climbing up along the ridge
Until somewhere below us
 
Is that other life we lived, so small now
That it must have always been gone.
 

from Sky Mall
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

__________

Eric Kocher: “A little over ten years ago, my friend Mark made a joke. He said that I should try to be the first person to publish a poem in Sky Mall Magazine. There was something about shopping for the most inane, kitschy stuff on the planet while flying 30,000 feet above it, just to avoid a moment of boredom, that seemed to be the antithesis of poetry. The words “Sky Mall” got stuck in my head—lodged there. This is almost always how poems happen for me. Language itself seems to be in the way just long enough to build tension before it can open into a space that pulls me forward. These poems finally arrived while I was traveling, first alone, and then the following year with my wife, as a new parent in that hazy dream of the post-pandemic. Writing them felt like going on a shopping spree, of sorts, so I tried to let myself say yes to everything.”

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November 13, 2024

Susan Johnson

CRIBBAGE LESSONS

The summer Dad decided it was time
I learned crib, counting fifteen two,
fifteen four, I loved doing the sums
 
in my head, tallying up the pairs,
runs, as if life were arithmetic,
which at six it was. Going into
 
second grade, the owner of three
hand-me-down bathing suits from
one sister, two cousins, I went
 
swimming five times a day and at
the general store one mile away,
bought a dime’s worth of penny
 
candy from a woman who had to
be a hundred. In four years mom
would have her mastectomy; in ten
 
she’d be dead. We didn’t know any
of that then. Just that it all adds up
until it doesn’t. Then you’re skunked.
 

from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

__________

Susan Johnson: “I spent my childhood being outside as much as possible and trying to solve the many puzzles that made up my life. I do the same as an adult, only now it’s language that I use to work through and understand what I encounter. I’m also more accepting when it doesn’t quite add up.”

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November 12, 2024

Christine Rhein

POST-ELECTION ABECEDARIAN

America, a gleaming ship—mighty engines,
billowing sails—the wind at our backs one minute, hurricanes
careening toward us the next. And our captain-to-be, once again,
does not call for All hands on deck!—alarm bells signaling
Every man for himself! Yes sir—women the first to be
frightened now—new crewmen taking charge of the infirmaries,
galleys, locking up their secret banquets, their fists proudly raised.
How clever, some believe, the constant riggings—ropes tied
into convoluted knots, and maps redrawn, based on coded
judgement. O say, can you see the country’s compass
keeps fogging—despite the talk of reading it clearly,
letting faith lead us, even as the waters darken.
Menacing—the threats we cannot see, the sharkish hunger,
nets upon nets dragged across the evening news. We’re tired
of snagging only lies, of casting for giant truths, what with icebergs
primed to go on melting, and those at the helm
questioning the data—rising temperatures, no big deal!
Rules of the sea, broken. In these stormy gales, our flag
snaps and frays, shackles clang, and the mast
teeters—our nausea churning amid pledges of allegiance.
Until January—beyond January—let us hold our
vessel safe, keep the cracks from spreading, work to
weld, reweld, push onward. Afterall, our children need
extra hope now, need a route out of the rage. Don’t most of us
yearn for a buoyant voyage, for a way to stop our frantic
zigs and zags, to steer together, free ourselves to sail as one?
 

from Poets Respond

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Christine Rhein: “This poem, written in alphabetical order, is an attempt to confront the chaos that’s been promised, to hope that America’s voyage isn’t doomed, to hope that the planet isn’t doomed.” (web)

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November 11, 2024

Sharon Ferrante

SIX SENRYU FOR EROTICA

 
 
 
my lover’s scent in the morning a wolf howls
 
 
 
on his lap
the bump and grind
of the old truck
 
 
 
romping
on cut grass
our green knees
 
 
 
lobster dinner
he licks the butter
from my chin
 
 
 
role-playing on the old piano
 
 
 
a hard night
I let him melt
in my mouth
 
 
 

from Rattle #85, Fall 2024

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Sharon Ferrante: “I write poetry because the poem tells me to. It’s like a door I run through in the night: it’s always open, filled with chatter.”

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November 10, 2024

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

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

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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