October 27, 2024

“A Poet’s Response to an Actor’s Assessment of a Politician’s Intelligence …” by Bob HicokPosted by

Bob Hicok

A POET’S RESPONSE TO AN ACTOR’S ASSESSMENT OF A POLITICIAN’S INTELLIGENCE, UNDERTAKEN IN THE SPIRIT OF THE BELIEF THAT WE’RE ALL BOZOS ON THIS BUS

I’m dumber than a Phillips head screwdriver
or on-ramp or speculum or rain and every diacritical
you can think of, critically or not, can do something
I can’t, I believe in the wisdom of matter,
that every form it takes is a species of intelligence,
an embodiment of knowledge, so to call
a candidate for president as dumb as a fencepost
or as dumb as a combover or as dumb
as a three-legged stool on the side of the road
looking as if it wants to cry, is like chiding the ocean
because it does a shitty Watusi or making fun of a puppy
who barks at its own hiccups, there’s a video of this,
probably more than one, and yes it’s kind of stupid
but that puppy could sniff out cancer or cocaine
better than you, and wag more fulsomely and literally
than you, and a fence post does an honest day’s work
every day of its life if given the chance, so if you must try
to insult someone running for president,
it’s better to call them as dumb as someone
who thinks calling someone dumb is still in style
after third grade, and what if that person is rubber
and you are glue, what then, dumbass, are we to make
of democracy in 2024, if insults are the currency
of debate, if love isn’t at the core of the endeavor,
love of our shared stupidity, cupidity, humidity,
our common state of befuddlement
over where this is all headed
and how best to get where we don’t know
we’re going, we need a president
who isn’t afraid to shrug, who gets
that ten people putting ten heads together
still leaves us with what experts refer to
as half a brain, please, god, enough
of the solo swagger, the hero pose,
I want a president who puts the everyone
in team, who believes that people
are our best chance to be human,
to maybe, possibly, one day
figure out what that even means.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Bob Hicok: “This is a poet’s response to an actor’s assessment of a politician’s intelligence.”

Rattle Logo

October 26, 2024

“Owl’s Kahoot” by Djuna WillsPosted by

Djuna Wills (age 10)

OWL’S KAHOOT

Outside my window at night I hear sounds.
Sounds of animals having fun. As my eyelids
were shutting I heard a “Who Who”
I was being funny I said “Me” and the owl said “You”
In the morning I woke up only to hear something at the door
I said “Who” it said “Who” I said “Me” and it said “You”
I opened the door and the owl flew in. I followed him upstairs then stopped
before a light. When the light was gone the owl was too.
 

—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Djuna Wills: “I like to write poetry because it’s entertaining, and it’s fun to write things that you think about.”

Rattle Logo

October 25, 2024

“On an 1894 Preacher’s Traveling Reed Organ” by Christine PotterPosted by

Christine Potter

ON AN 1894 PREACHER’S TRAVELING REED ORGAN

It probably survived by being broken, never
wired-up for someone’s psychedelic band
in the ’60s, not interesting to children who’d
have abused it casually as they do aged dogs
 
they are told not to bother. Shaped like a tiny
chapel itself: black wood, tarnished gilt, legs
meant to fold under so it could be carried.
Weak and tired as any of us are when love
 
surprises us and we find ourselves needed
once again. My husband has repaired it and
playing it is like riding your first bicycle uphill
on a warm day full of white-flowering trees,
 
or maybe like your grandmother’s voice, not
when she was scolding you but when she
sang the alleluias from “The Strife Is O’er,”
and freed your hair from the braids you hated
 
so she could brush it for you. See? It’s just the
two of you in your bedroom, after supper, and
the shades are pulled down against the length
of the light. She stands behind you, lost in song.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians

__________

Christine Potter: “Churches keep a lot of musicians going, and not just spiritually: they pay them. A church gig, if you can face Sunday (or in temples, Saturday) morning, is an excellent thing. A church musician was the last thing I thought I’d ever end up being, but then I married an organist/choir director who realized that all those folk-rock ambitions I had in the ’70s weren’t for naught. They could be useful if he needed a soprano, someone to figure out how to play the tower chimes at a job we worked together in the Bronx, someone to play dulcimer with the children’s choir … all I needed was some vocal training. So he provided it. After that we were ‘two for the price of one.’ I guess I went pro at our first sushi lunch (a tradition of ours) after picking up the envelope after a funeral. That sounds ghoulish—and it isn’t. Church music taught me to laugh and cry at the same time. I think that’s the first thing a poet needs to know.” (web)

Rattle Logo

October 24, 2024

“Tanka [construction cones]” by Cindy GuenthermanPosted by

Have you ever eaten breakfast here before? by Barbara Gordon, oil painting for two construction barrels leaning toward each other as if in conversation in an empty parking lot

Image: “Have you ever eaten breakfast here before?” by Barbara Gordon. “[construction cones]” was written by Cindy Guentherman for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

__________

Cindy Guentherman

TANKA

construction cones
tilted a little
toward each other—
how we lean forward
to say what matters
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2024, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Barbara Gordon: “It’s amazing how all of the poets constructed so many different stories about my painting. I’m down to these two. This tanks really captures the essence of the painting, I think: the feeling of the two barrels leaning over to talk: a little quirky, a little funny, a little tragic. The barrels and cones talking to each other, telling little stories.”

Rattle Logo

October 23, 2024

“Petite Chanson de Démence” by Richard NewmanPosted by

Richard Newman

PETITE CHANSON DE DÉMENCE

My father asks if Genji’s a girl or boy
over and over over family dinner.
It’s not his fault. He doesn’t mean to annoy
us when he asks if Genji’s a girl or boy.
He has no past, just stray moments of joy.
His face, his voice, his soul have all grown thinner,
worn down asking if Genji’s a girl or boy
over and over over family dinner.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians

__________

Richard Newman: “After mowing lawns, my first job was playing upright bass for our civic theater orchestra. My first show was a Cole Porter review, a great way to learn how to stitch words and music together. Around that same time, my own band was playing in bars. I was 16, and we were paid the door, a pizza, and as much beer as we could drink. I’ve been a professional musician and songwriter since then, playing in orchestras and bands, though the last decade I’ve travelled the world and rarely play with others. The last songs I’ve written were for my young son, and my last ASCAP royalties deposit barely paid for an iced latte in 2017 when I was in the Marshall Islands. Nonetheless, I’m still drawn to song forms in poetry, especially sonnets (little songs), villanelles (country peasant songs), and triolets (clover leaf songs). Even when I don’t take on a traditional form, I often work in meter. Rarely do I mix the writing process in poetry and songwriting. One can get away with lines in a song that look banal on the naked page, but it works the other way, too. Lines of poetry often sound ridiculous sung out loud. I’m equally drawn to story and song. Even a triolet for me contains a narrative impulse. Singing our stories is the best of both worlds.”

Rattle Logo

October 22, 2024

“Birthday” by Patricia SmithPosted by

Patricia Smith

BIRTHDAY

On this bed of chilled steel, I am the morning’s work,
your project after coffee and, oh yes, some woman’s son.
Whistling to break the ice in the room, you hold
most of my head in your hands. Your shaping fingers
gently adjust an ear, probe a hollow eye socket,
flick chips of dried blood away from a blown-open
hairline. No one but you and I hear as you inhale
and, without exhaling, whisper the name I once had.

Grimacing, edging slowly toward overwhelm,
you clutch the photo, glancing from the grinning grad
to the exploded boy. Now the only sound in the room
is the flat hiss of the blade as you whittle a dim smile,
free fluid from my blue mouth. You reach into your bag
and pull out a nose, a sliver of chin, a ragged scalp,
and see them as just that—a shard of skin, that scalp.
You touch with the stark slowness of a lover, but you
don’t cry out from that lover’s deep bone. Just how
did you die your soul enough to be this temporary god,
stitching conjured light into the cave of my chest?

My mother sat across from you, tangled her hands
and re-scripted my days, wailing that the bullet
was meant for someone else, not me, not me, no,
not me, and would you please make him the way he was,
as close as you can to not dead, not dead, not gone,
and you said yes. You promised she’d be able to gaze
upon me and say, with that liquid hope in her voice,
He looks like he’s sleeping. She’s the reason you carve
and paste and snip with such focus, why you snap
my bones only to reset them, why you drag a comb
through the

I can’t hear her voice anymore.
I can’t hear the bullet slicing the night toward me.
I can’t hear anything now but you,
whistling your perk past numb ritual,
stopping now and again to behold your gift
to the woman who first told you my name,
just before she handed you a picture
and begged you please, as best you can, My baby.

—from Rattle #32, Summer 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

__________

Patricia Smith: “I was living in Chicago and found out about a poetry festival in a blues club on a winter afternoon. It was just going to be continuous poetry, five hours. It was the first event in a series called Neutral Turf, which was supposed to bring street poets and academic poets together. And I thought, I’ll get some friends together and we’ll go laugh at the poets. We’ll sit in the back, we’ll heckle, it’ll be great. But when I got there, I was amazed to find this huge literary community in Chicago I knew nothing about. The poetry I heard that day was immediate and accessible. People were getting up and reading about things that everyone was talking about. Gwendolyn Brooks was there, just sitting and waiting her turn like everyone else. There were high school students. And every once in a while a name poet would get up. Gwen got up and did her poetry, then sat back down and stayed for a long time. And I just wanted to know—who are these people? Why is this so important to them? Why had they chosen to be here as opposed to the 8 million other places they could have been in Chicago?” (web)

Rattle Logo

October 21, 2024

“Poems Used to Rhyme” by Doc MehlPosted by

Doc Mehl

POEMS USED TO RHYME

Poems used to rhyme.
In time, the couplets were dispensed.
Incensed, today’s poet rebels from rhyming schemes,
It seems. The writer, newly shedding the shackles of quatrains,
Refrains from even a modicum of lilt.
 
And built now from unpaired diphthongs,
His songs have lost a measure of glue.
It’s true. No longer does the ear delight
In flight of fancy, in teeter-totter,
Like water on the endless sand, the to-and-fro,
And no, this tide will not abate.
 
Of late, I find that poems no longer draw me in.
They’re thin.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians

__________

Doc Mehl: “In songwriting, poetry, or prose, I strive for (and rarely achieve) poignant simplicity. Genius is overrated. Simplicity is its own form of genius.” (web)

Rattle Logo