Search Results for: stroke

September 15, 2019

We’re pleased to announce the following $10,000 Rattle Poetry Prize winner:

Matthew Dickman

“Stroke”
Matthew Dickman
London, United Kingdom

Matthew Dickman was raised by his mother in the Lents neighborhood of Southeast Portland along with his sister Elizabeth and twin brother, the poet Michael Dickman. After studying at Portland Community College and the University of Oregon, he earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center. He was the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Book Award and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow. Dickman is the author of three full length collections, All American Poem, which won the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, Mayakovsky’s Revolver (W.W. Norton & Co, 2012), and Wonderland (W.W. Norton & Co, 2017).Currently, Matthew teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low-residency MFA program and writes advertisements for a living. He lives in London, United Kingdom, with his partner and two children. (web)

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Finalists:

Note: After subscriber vote, James Davis May was selected as winner of the Readers’ Choice Award. For more information and the full results, click here.

“Punch Line”
Kathleen Balma
New Orleans, LA

“Bonanza”
Susan Browne
Oakland, CA

“Mother and Child”
Barbara Crane
Somerville, MA

“Foreign-ness”
Maya Tevet Dayan
Hod Hasharon, Israel

“Cathedrals: Ode to a Deported Uncle”
Daniel Arias Gómez
Fresno, CA

“The Never-Ending Serial”
Red Hawk
Monticello, AR

“Gender Studies”
Sue Howell
Durham, NC

“From Oblivious Waters”
Kimberly Kemler
Baltimore, MD

“Red in Tooth and Claw”
James May
Macon, GA

“Self-Portrait, Despite What They Say”
Gabrielle Otero
Astoria, NY

These eleven poems will published in issue #66 of Rattle. Each of the Finalists are also eligible for the $2,000 Readers’ Choice Award, selected by subscriber vote in February.

An additional 8 poets were selected for standard publication, and offered a space in the open section of a future issue. These poets have been notified individually about details, but they are: Megan Alyse, Jacqueline Berger, Gregory Loselle, Laura Read, Jennifer Perrine, T.R. Poulson, Yaccaira Salvatierra, and Laura Tanenbaum.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition, which would not have been a success without your diverse and inspiring poems. This felt like the strongest year of entries by a wide margin, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to read. We received 3,606 entries and over 14,000 poems, and it was an honor to read each of them.

August 25, 2019

“Certain Islands” by Ori FienbergPosted by

Ori Fienberg

CERTAIN ISLANDS

I’ve only seen a wild fire once, and it was probably too small
to count, just a spontaneous outburst in a grove of gnarled

white spruce on a powder keg of brittle needles, raising a gray
flag high. But who knows? Maybe it was careless campers (to

err is only presidential) or perhaps it was intentional. Certainly
there was a thrill in watching it burn, from a canoe, gliding across

a broad lake, while a few drops of water sprayed on each stroke.
It’s easy to hold a peninsula on fire in view, but harder to see the

forest for the trees, to imagine the fire everywhere, the exhaust
rushing unavoidably into the lungs of the earth. At the same time

all the men I knew growing up were islands of sorts, unclaimed or,
not for sale, far too vast to put a price tag on certain principles;

now I fear some men are islands who could burst into flames at any
moment, not like lava from a volcano thought dormant, but the sort

we’re building every day from the tinder we share with each other:
papery birch barked opinions, crisp conspiracies of undergrowth

where a spark can start a blaze so fast that smoke is only released
later, like thunder from a far-off lightning strike. I wish we knew now,

what we know now; I wish a satellite shot of a carbon cloud could
cause as much fear as the rotting body of a moose in a place that

will never burn. A political candidate must shake hands with every
person in NH to get their vote: it’s so hard to trust or believe what

everyone tells you, till you row the length of Lake Winnipesaukee
and lose the sun in pink water, till you can feel it in your own lungs.

—from Poets Respond
August 25, 2019

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Ori Fienberg: “There are so many small men and small conflagrations right in front of us, that absurd speculation around the sale of an enormous island territory can monopolize our attention for days. Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate.” (web)

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August 19, 2019

“Comforts” by Bruce BennettPosted by

Bruce Bennett

COMFORTS

for David Berman, 1934–2017

You used to write about the snow.
How you would sit before a fire
relishing Bach. Distilled desire
attended you. Nowhere to go,

Nothing to do but stroke the cat.
Your comforts were well understood.
Your cat and you are gone for good.
There is small comfort now in that.

I’ve read your poems since you died.
I know the tale they had to tell.
You knew what waited all too well.
That snow is piling up outside.

You knew that soon enough you’d go.
But you rejoiced in Bach, the fire,
the cat. Your poems proclaim desire
attained. Your poems defy the snow.

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

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Bruce Bennett: “David Berman, who had two poems appear in last winter’s issue of Rattle, was the first reader of my poetry for more than 55 years, and for most of that time I was the first reader of his. We met in Archibald MacLeish’s English S at Harvard in the fall of 1961, when I was a first-year graduate student in English and he was in his second year at Harvard Law School. He passed away in June 2017.” Note: For more on formalist poet David Berman, watch Rattlecast #3.

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February 7, 2019

“Scene from a Restaurant Window” by L. Llewellyn ByardPosted by

L. Llewellyn Byard

SCENE FROM A RESTAURANT WINDOW

He pried open her hand,
first her thumb—
she trembled as he did so—
then her fingers, one by one,
gently as if their years together
made his task easier,
as if the cane she walked with
supported them both.

Time.
Gnarled, stroke-worn hands.

I envied her as I watched—
eating my lunch alone, as he placed
her open hand upon his arm, her purse
over his own stooped shoulders,
as they shuffled slowly
down the street.

—from Rattle #9, Summer 1998

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L. Llewellyn Byard: “My eight-year-old granddaughter, Ali, called me. ‘I need to know if the Easter Bunny is real,’ she asked. Her father is dying of pancreatic cancer. Lucy said that she reminded her of their cuddle times when they had their eyes closed, and when they had gone skating on a pond of glass-like ice, the times they flew with eagles over treetops glistening with snow, their swims with the sea turtles. Lucy reminded her of the magic of garden divas, of leaving carrots out for reindeer. Ali stopped her. ‘Grammie, my friends at school and I are building a house with mud and dirt and tree sticks for the fairies!’ Her voice rose as she remembered the magic.”

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February 3, 2019

“Cold Front” by Elya BradenPosted by

Elya Braden

COLD FRONT

When the cold front hit, icing the breadbasket
of America, the government banned all household
pets. Too much waste! declared the President,
who’d never walked a dog or stroked a cat.

After the collection centers failed, the National Guard,
with blue efficiency, swept through neighborhoods
armed with dog treats and catnip, cages and flashlights,
poking into closets, peering under porches.

In the teeming cities, hordes of homeless invaded
once overflowing shelters. Later, some were spotted
wearing scarves reminiscent of tabby tails,
hands snugged in fur-lined mittens.

Care Bears™ replaced service animals.
Stepping in for seeing-eye dogs
became a popular form of community service.
Exterminators were busy trapping mice.

With no dogs to walk, people stayed indoors.
I heard the little girl next door cry herself
to sleep, her parents shouting in the kitchen.
The little boy across the street gnawed his nails

to the quick. His sister developed trichotillomania,
harvesting her golden hair like wheat. At the pharmacy,
a line around the block for Xanax, Zoloft, Celexa.
Was it growing colder?

At night, I prowl through our home, my ear
tuned for the tinny jingle of our CoCo’s bell,
expecting a gray swish of tail in the corner of my eye.
I lift a bed-skirt in half-remembered anticipation.

I try to knit but can’t stop my hands from trembling.
I wake to a wet nuzzling near my elbow or a 2 a.m. meow,
then realize it’s the contrail of a dream. We toss her litter box,
her pooper scooper, her collar stitched with tiny hearts,

but keep her furminator on the nightstand, make
an altar of her favorite toys. Now, my husband and I
take turns. Some days, he kneels and licks her bowl.
Others, I curl at his feet and purr.

—from Poets Respond
February 3, 2019

__________

Elya Braden: “I’ve been horrified by our President’s denial of global warming, calling it ‘an expensive hoax’ and joking that we could use a little global warming in the face of colder winter storms. His administration’s policy of separating families seeking asylum and his recent statements that he was prepared to declare a state of emergency in order to force the funding for his wall made me wonder what irrational actions he might take in the event of an actual climate disaster, particularly after seeing this article in Travel & Leisure about dangerously cold winter storms brought on by global warming.” (web)

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December 8, 2018

“Sonnet for Thunder Lovers and Primary Colors” by Brenda CárdenasPosted by

Brenda Cárdenas

SONNET FOR THUNDER LOVERS AND PRIMARY COLORS

When Sweet Nothings Just Don’t Cut It

You’re more than soda fizz, than sparklers lit
for kids at play, than fireflies’ flit in sky.
You spin around my heart and up my thigh
with the whistle and boom of a bottle rocket.
Baby, those other jugglers’ gigolo tricks—
magician’s spell and mime’s unspoken sigh—
don’t turn my head, don’t catch my ear or eye,
but your mercury rolls in my hip pocket.

Some women like the subtle hints, require
a pastel touch, a whispered cry and blush,
but not me; I am all hyperbole.
Your howls of red, your strokes of green sapphire,
your cayenne kiss, serrano pepper rush
from lip to nape of knee will do for me.

—from Rattle #12, Winter 1999
Tribute to Latino/Chicano Poets

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Brenda Cárdenas: “Few books inhabited my childhood home—a dictionary, the Bible, a few encyclopedias—however, I grew up listening to an aunt, grandfather, and grandmother tell vivid stories of dancing horses, hangings, and flights form their pueblos during the Mexican Revolution or drinking at speakeasies during prohibition in the U.S.” (web)

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October 15, 2018

“Meditation on a Dining Room Table” by Marvin ArtisPosted by

Marvin Artis

MEDITATION ON A DINING ROOM TABLE

She wanted warm wood. He wanted the sleek and gleam
of glass and steel. They compromised and brought home
the one with a glass top and a wood base. In the early years,
the new table, standing among graduate school relics, served
as evidence that they had married far more than their marriage
license. The glass and wood held wedding china,
candlelight, dreams and last looks before sex.

Both of them thought it was half-assed, but each pretended to like it.
She hated cleaning it. It was the only thing he liked to clean.
If he noticed a bit of dust clinging, he would whisk it away.
She never did that. Two or three times each year, the marriage
would demand something from each of them, so that it could live.

They divorced. She kept the house and the table in it. Years later
he could recall none of their married furniture in detail, except the table.
He never returned to their home, but he received pictures
of their kids over the years where the table sometimes wandered
into the background. It always surprised him to see it, but each time
it sent a wish up his spine. If only he could know what he didn’t know.
Why didn’t she let it go as she did with so many other things?
Was she the one who cleaned it, or did she usually leave it for one
of the kids to do? Did her hands, which were really beautiful, stroke it
with care or with obligation when she wiped spills and smudges away?
Did she and the table ever sit alone together in the dining room,
her soft palms resting on its firmness, just being with each other in silence?

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

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Marvin Artis: “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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