April 20, 2023

“I Asked the Chatbot to Write about a Lighthouse, but It Generated Lies” by Pamela Lucinda MossPosted by

Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by G.G. Silverman, photograph of a lighthouse in fog

Image: “Lighthouse at the Edge of the World” by G.G. Silverman. “I Asked the Chatbot to Write about a Lighthouse, but It Generated Lies” was written by Pamela Lucinda Moss for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Pamela Lucinda Moss

I ASKED THE CHATBOT TO WRITE ABOUT A LIGHTHOUSE, BUT IT GENERATED LIES

You need to be human to know about lighthouses.
 
You need to know what it feels like to wait in the dark for your teenager to come home, with your weighted blanket and your dachshund stretched long against your side, your brain spinning with worry, flashing beams of fear into the blackness of your bedroom.
 
You need to feel old. You need to mis-hear things, mis-state things. Mess up the arithmetic when you add a tip to your check at the 65th Street Diner. Write a note to your kid that says: You rip what you sew. Write in your journal: I am in the throws of motherhood.
 
You need to feel fear and rigidity as you stand on your metaphorical windy promontory, poised at the point where land and sea and the rest of your life meet, but maybe not so much fear that you write reviews like: This book is too pointy. When my toddler fell on this book, he scraped his cheek. I give it one star.
 
You need to know about being alone, about reaching into a popcorn bag in a second-run movie theater and never touching other fingers. When the movie ends, you walk through the doors into the audacity of so much sky, so much light. A flyer on a telephone pole reads: Do you miss singing? You take a picture of it, and the possibility of joining a choir recedes into the vastness of your camera roll, along with pictures of stray cats, of recipes you’ve never cooked, of your bare toes on sand on the first day of spring when there was light on the water and so much joy, spinning and shining from the tall, round room of your heart.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2023, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, G.G. Silverman: “The humor in the title grabbed my attention (I laughed out loud—well done!), then the poem took me on a gut-felt emotional journey, where the reader lives the mother’s anguish for her child’s well-being via wonderfully immersive, scenic lighthouse metaphors. I love how the imagery in the poem takes on a sensuous, dreamy blur toward the end, and we, as readers, become the lighthouse itself.”

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April 19, 2023

“Fykiaphobia” by Maeve McKennaPosted by

Maeve McKenna

FYKIAPHOBIA

I write dead eels, limb, salt, choke. I write the stairs are steep.
I write Retreat, with a capital R.
 
Dementia in nursing homes; a manual on the education and training of care staff.
Who tended my father’s itchy nose, his cold feet? I write care, not in capitals.
 
What should I do if every doctor refuses to treat my fear of seaweed?
I write Lexapro, Xanax, weed.
 
I had counselling with a woman who held scissors
between her thumb and index finger like a catapult.
 
It’s snowing. I grieve for black angels.
My mother drank vodka straight. In 1976, the corporation planted 
ash trees outside our front door.
 
In 1989, they shovelled lorries of tarmac onto the roots. 
My brother dragged my mother by the hair through the hall
one Sunday morning. 
 
She was fussing at our ringlets for mass just after.
 
I should revisit my poem about Medusa. I write this in red. 
I write central heating and something I can’t read.
 
Solicitors invest the souls of bereft clients. 
Frogs never make it across the road. I write imagine.
 
The spine of a kitten under the wheel of a car. I held that body 
over the toilet, squeezed the abdomen to empty its bladder.
I write silly kitten, motherhood, Google.
 
Writers’ retreats are overrated. Read on.
 
Esther, who works at the retreat, said I should take the estates High Nelly to Newbliss. 
I bought strange food; twelve bananas, one boil in the bag rice, a net of blood 
oranges, microwave popcorn. (I consider Garamond.)
 
The retreat has a lake but it has lakeweed. Residents swim at their own risk; 
Is it called lakeweed? I’ll ask someone in the Big House.
I write ask.
 
My father isn’t here to carry me in and out, but
I announce my new name—Fykiaphobia—
to his face on my keyring, keep saying it. I like it. I am sophisticatedly deranged.
 
My father had dementia. Bruises on his arms. My father’s radio went missing.
I went to counselling after the counsellor lady with the scissors.
 
My journal is so close to my elbows my armhair has papercuts.
I don’t write this.
 
My mother smoked Silk Cut Red. She beat us. My mother loved Liz Taylor.
Snow sounds like grief underfoot.
 
If I held a match to my hair, could I burn just my hair?
 
My father’s eyelids lost the blinking reflex three years before he died.
The village shop sells wine and cider.
 
My brother grew his red hair and beard for three years. Didn’t wash.
My brother died two months ago. When I send my sisters emails
Gmail gives me the option to “add” him.
 
If there’s a God, show me him blinking. I write—happy with that line.
Horses are huge. I write about huge horses.
 
The counsellor lady with the scissors told me to cut through the crap.
 
In 1999, council men cut down the trees, left the roots,
the tarmac bulging, shiny.
 
I write single-glazed windows. I write anthracite, condensation, lovehearts.
Why did my mother beat us? I write, occasionally. I write ventilation.
 
My mother is dead all over again. When the parish priest visited 
he wore a herring-bone overcoat, cravat, hand-made Italian shoes.
 
I draw her lips between the lines, pink as my highlighter.
 
My niece stole my mother’s sadness. I write sadness.
I miss my children. The shop sold out of wine.
At night I hear other writers talking.
 
I write ink is the ghost of the white comma. I write slap. I write wrist.
 
For breakfast I make banana pancakes then run 5k into the forest. 
 
A Vauxhall Corsa in a clearing near the woods 
beside Annaghmakerrig lake. I write handbrake. Scribble over it. See!
 
Does lakeweed make me lakeaphobic? I am a. I am the unnecessary ‘a.’
I think of tadpole in my ears. I write amazing(ly). 
 
Mouth ulcers are spitefully soothing. I write milk. I 
write blink. I write Xanthophobia, Otophobia, Ailurophobia. 
All those.
 

—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets

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Maeve McKenna: “I have been writing poetry since I was a child. In the Dublin suburb where I grew up, life was about surviving and the idea you could become anything other than a worker seemed fanciful, and so, I wrote poetry in secret for most of my life and dreamed of one day being ‘a poet.’ Many of my poems allude to my childhood years, a deeply traumatic time of revelations and change for the Irish nation. I now write without fear, old enough to be at peace where I find myself these days, living a quiet life in rural Ireland and allowing nature to be the new inspiration in telling the stories I still need to tell.” (web)

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April 18, 2023

“All Dressed in Green” by Peter KrassPosted by

Peter Krass

ALL DRESSED IN GREEN

In the latest issue of Quagmire I find 7 new poems by Billy Collins.
In the new Kiss My Quarterly, 12 poems by Billy Collins.
Coming soon in Broken Meter, 18 poems by Billy Collins.
On NPR radio, Billy Collins reads “Wish I’d Written That.”
In my sleep, Billy Collins stars in a major motion picture
Directed by Billy Collins, produced by Billy Collins,
And featuring a supporting cast of thousands of Billy Collinses.

Tonight, at my local Barnes & Starbucks,
Billy Collins is giving a reading,
So naturally I go, all dressed in green,
Color of envy, money, and snot.
Other striving poets fill nearly every seat,
Each wearing something green,
Each moving their lips as they quietly pray,
“O gods of poetry, whoever you are,
Please let a magic morsel fly
From the mouth of Billy Collins
And infect me, like a virus,
With whatever he has: The virus
Of being published,
The virus of selling books,
The virus of success.”

I sneer at them: “Stupid poets,”
I say, “That’s not how life works.”
But when Billy Collins appears at last,
Smiling and nodding, clearing his throat,
I find my seat in the very front row,
Open my mouth as wide as it goes,
And breathe.

—from Rattle #33, Summer 2010
Tribute to Humor

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Peter Krass: “With my own poems superbly insulating a couple of desk drawers, I couldn’t help but notice how my favorite literary journals were being dominated by just a few well-known poets. The same six or seven names seemed to be everywhere, taking up all the literary oxygen and leaving none for me. Suffocation being a strict taboo in my religion, I instead wrote ‘All Dressed in Green’ and have been breathing freely ever since.”

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April 17, 2023

“Lessons in Survival” by Neil McCarthyPosted by

Neil McCarthy

LESSONS IN SURVIVAL

I’ve all but given up on ever speaking Irish again, 
on playing the cousin to tones of a country once removed, 
plucking on phrases I learned phonetically under 
the nettled glare of a Christian Brother.
 
Instead, I’m teaching my daughter German, watching her 
devour umlauts, count to ten, translate colors, animals, parts 
of the body, the food on her plate. No Graiméar na Gaeilge. 
No wall-papered hand-me-down angst-inducers. 
 
Their names are lost on me now, the Brothers—the celibate 
signs of shaving foam behind the ears, the dusty smell of chalk 
from the clout of their hands; the Sisters of Mercy are long gone 
too, as is the sound of the beads in the halls they warded. 
 
I see the empty classrooms in my head, paint audibly peeling, 
a fanfare of damp spreading; lopsided Jesuses ready to fall; 
one-piece wooden desks with a hundred names carved with 
a compass into the grains like chalk strokes on a prison wall.
 
I hear a phonebook of nicknames bellowed down corridors, 
reeled off like an angelus of Sé do bheatha, a Mhuires; 
wisecracks in which we garrisoned ourselves over the years; 
skins growing thicker by the bruises. 
 

—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets

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Neil McCarthy: “Like many Irish, I’m riddled with nostalgia. I’ve learned to live with it, love it, and lyricize it. Like many Irish, I live abroad now, and having resided in LA and now Vienna, poetry helps me recreate snapshots and reels of an absolutely beautiful upbringing in West Cork.”

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April 16, 2023

“Serious People” by Elizabeth McMunn-TetangcoPosted by

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

SERIOUS PEOPLE

That’s what we want
for our children, isn’t
 
it? Shoulders that fit
like shoulder pads. Not
 
sloping gravel ones, the pieces
flying off. I need
 
to make everything small, so I can
see. Pennies
 
with dates stamped
because somehow that will
 
matter. Tips
of teeth.
 
Someone told me once
his biggest fear
 
is death. No,
I’m just kidding! It was
 
failure. Like it might
come out and eat
 
him. Like
the people on the street would somehow
 
know.
It’s springtime now. I’m watching hawks
 
during my meetings, holding cloud-
shade on their backs.
 
All the heart-
shaped arcs of bees
 
doing their work.
 

—from Poets Respond
April 16, 2023

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Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco: “I realize there are a thousand more important things happening in the world at large right now, but I wanted to write about the line of dialogue on Succession where Logan tells his children that he loves them, but they aren’t serious people. Succession was in the news a lot this week for various reasons (I’m not getting into spoilers here or in the poem), and something about that line hit me really hard because I feel like I can relate. Thank you for the chance to send these and for reading them all every week!”

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April 15, 2023

“The Conversation” by Jon PinedaPosted by

Jon Pineda

THE CONVERSATION

Take the time
my brother, just a boy,
sat alone in the house
and spoke to the stray.
Nestled in a blanket
faded as the ocean is
some days, the cat lay
swollen with trinkets.
Intent, my brother stroked
a streak of wet hair under
the cat’s throat, curlicued
with fluid, as one by one
its young slid out in glazed
wrapping, each cradling
a purse of blood and blue
meat, all of it a kind of food
the mother struggled to eat.

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005
Tribute to Filipino Poets

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Jon Pineda: “I come from a long line of ‘cat whisperers.’” (website)

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April 14, 2023

“Today My Father Should Be at The Score” by Joanne McCarthyPosted by

Joanne McCarthy

TODAY MY FATHER SHOULD BE AT THE SCORE

marking out the route, 
pulling out road signs from the back of the car— 
road bowling in progress—
a high viz jacket thrown about him 
to keep the Ból Chumann crowd quiet. 
He should be meeting the lads, his mates arriving 
over the brow after milking the cows, walking the dogs, 
doing a stint at the back wall of the church for Mass. 
He should be handing over cash, or totting the running tab, 
giving 20 to Tim, Joe, or Jimmy 
and placing their communal bet, backing their player. 
He should be tearing fresh grass from the ditch 
and shouting back at the crowd to stay in out of the way. 
He should be watching someone he’s known all his life 
take an exuberant run, 
a mighty lift into the air, 
arm rotating, 
swinging the solid iron ball in their fist, 
circulating this living heat. 
He should be watching this ball, this bowl 
bullet through the air. 
He should be eyeing the drop, 
the land on the tar road 
and be arriving at the drop spot to mark it 
with a fistful of freshly ripped grass 
and he should be calling, calling on 
for the next player to come up 
to the starting spot 
and not be holding the whole bloody show up. 
He should be watching the sparring pair 
throw their bowls in sequential turns 
eyeing their run, loft, flight of the ball 
and the land, 
the flint chink spark of metal on tar road. 
He should be critiquing throws 
with a gut full of intuition, 
decades of living the run, launch, fly, 
ball landing, 
the soft roll to the edge of the ditch 
or deep crash within the briars of the ditch. 
He should be at the finish line shouting for the winner. 
He should be shaking hands, 
banging backs, 
pocketing his share of the winnings. 
He should be on the high stool in Cookies, 
a creamy head settling on his pint of Guinness 
and the retelling of it all 
just beginning.
 

—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
Tribute to Irish Poets

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Joanne McCarthy: “I write bi-lingually, in Irish and English. My English is a Hiberno-English that I inherited from my family in West Cork. I came to poetry through the Irish language first and I continue to read and write in Irish. My engagement in Irish language poetry continues to echo through my work in English.” (web)

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