February 24, 2023

“Your Hands” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

YOUR HANDS

Like coals they ashed me bit by bit, your hands.
The open fire thrilled me, I admit—your hands.
 
A panther only sees white food at night. It is natural,
then, that against my cheekbone you hit your hands.
 
I crumbled into the sour milk of your tears as you begged:
So deep is my pain, save me. With this ring, commit your hands.
 
You called me priestess, whore, my half, my sin, my soul.
I sang bastard, bewitcher infidel, hypocrite, your hands.
 
Great men become bone, their names given to stars, but stars too
burned when they learned how piety and lust lit your hands.
 
I unearthed my cremains from the ghats of the Ganges;
a beggar tithed me a coin, along with it, your hands.
 
I discovered a woman created in my own image. I lifted her veil.
Behind it: dead birds, zephyrs, a faded palette, your hands.
 
You said, love achieves glory when lovers take up arms.
Yet no matter what I killed I could never outwit your hands.
 
Who has not made love to beasts in wild wastelands?
Shannan, it is not gold, it is gore, it is shit: your hands.
 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Shannan Mann: “I wrote for several hours a day until I was 17. Then, I ran away from an abusive home and wound up in an almost-worse place. I didn’t write for 8 ½ years. After a near-death birth experience (for both my daughter and me), I was inspired to begin writing again. The first poem I wrote was for a Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge. Through that, I connected with previous challenge winner, Karan Kapoor, who encouraged me to read Agha Shahid Ali’s collection of English ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. He also challenged I write a better ghazal than the master. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come close to Shahid, but this poem is now part of a growing collection of ghazals that deal with my experience as a woman, person of colour, and a mother. All poetry is community, but the ghazal especially so. And I don’t think I’d be exaggerating one bit if I said that Rattle helped me to be a part of this community once again, long after I thought I’d exiled myself beyond return. My sincere gratitude for this magazine and every single poet who graces these pages.” (web)

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February 23, 2023

“Devotion” by Brianna LockePosted by

Dream House, Later by Susan MacMurdy, collage of a house on a calendar

Image: “Dream House, Later” by Susan MacMurdy. “Devotion” was written by Brianna Locke for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

__________

Brianna Locke

DEVOTION

Think about: the sun, climbing
through windows
into pearl-grey morning, gently
waking the body.
 
How light expands outward
from the horizon,
uncontained.
 
And the breeze, playing
with leaves, like fingers
through a beloved’s hair.
 
And the days. Remnants of
the hardest rolling over
to finally rest.
 
And the bright stillness
of everything,
your lungs fresh and wide
 
with every new breath.
Each beat of your heart,
inside of your ribs,
 
a small knocking,
the pulse
reminding the house
what keeps it warm.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2023, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Susan MacMurdy: “After reading and rereading the wonderful poems written in response to my collage, what finally helped me decide was imagining the poem and my collage hanging side by side on a wall where they could talk to one another. ‘Devotion’ seemed to expand and deepen the conversation started by my artwork. ‘Dream House, Later’ was one of several collages I completed during that first pandemic summer. I set up a summer studio at a friend’s house north of New York City. The simple building depicted in my collage was both my work and living space. And everything I needed. The lines: ‘And the days. Remnants of / the hardest rolling over / to finally rest’ recalled my use of cut-up calendars as a reminder of counting, losing track of, and somehow surviving those difficult days. Dreams were put on hold or deferred. Priorities shifted. The final lines sum up the hopeful image of heartbeats at the open door.”

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February 22, 2023

“Diary Poems” by Richard JordanPosted by

Richard Jordan

DIARY POEMS

What led her to write poetry she didn’t
show to others? She entrusted verses
to diaries with gold-edged pages, hidden
in a cedar chest. Preserved in cursive
are rondeaux and cinquains. She relished snow,
seashells, roses. There’s a bookmarked sonnet
about a grandchild she would never know,
a future that took shape the way she wanted.
 
My grandma had no training, didn’t go
beyond eighth grade. Amid the Great Depression
she worked the mills, saved feed sacks to make clothes.
But here’s a line she wrote absent the lessons:
Dusk rolls a coral carpet down the stream.
I’ve seen that for myself. For real. In dreams.
 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Richard Jordan: “Mathematician Lipman Bers (1914–1993) said, ‘mathematics is very much like poetry … what makes a good poem—a great poem—is that there is a large amount of thought expressed in very few words.’ I’m a mathematician myself, and while I can’t really explain what drives my need/desire to express myself via the written word, I guess it isn’t all that surprising that I turn to poetry to do so.”

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February 21, 2023

“Pigeon Dyed Pink” by Clare CrossPosted by

Clare Cross

PIGEON DYED PINK

I too colored birds, or tried to. Mine
didn’t hatch. Every day, I peered
into the yellow incubators, hoping
to see a cracked shell, a blood spot,
a beak, something to tell me I’d have
bright chicks, like I saw at the state fair
and could bring to the science fair.
After we gave up, my father buried
the eggs out back, broke them
first to see. I was too sad to watch,
but my sister remembers a dead chick,
brilliant blue like the food coloring
I’d injected, my ten-year-old fingers
pushing the hypodermic’s plunger
after carefully poking small holes.
I wrote out a schedule for turning
the eggs. Everyone played mother hen.
My brother, who stayed up late,
turned them at night, my mother
at dawn. How I longed for those chicks,
red, blue, green. How I pictured them,
pretty and purple and soft. And then
it was over, nothing but broken shells,
dead embryos. I still made a poster
for the science fair, set out empty
incubators, talked to judges, somehow
won a first prize. My brother built
a computer and won first outstanding.
But in this year, this 1969, when everyone
knew Christiaan Barnard’s name, the boy
who sliced open two rats, moved a heart
from one chest to another, called this
a transplant, counted ten heartbeats
and said the rat lived, that boy
got his picture in the newspaper,
his two dead rats right there
on the front page.
 

—from Poets Respond
February 21, 2023

__________

Clare Cross: “When I saw the story about the pigeon that died (and was dyed), probably after being used for a gender-reveal party, I was appalled like everyone else. But then I remembered that, as a child, I had seen dyed baby chicks at the State Fair and for some reason, my parents agreed to let me try dying some for a science fair project. So then I started thinking about my child self, my parents, and the general disregard for animals at that science fair, which led to this poem.”

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February 20, 2023

“Slut” by Elizabeth HillPosted by

Elizabeth Hill

SLUT

In the parking lot of Churchill’s Garden Center, my mother
turned to me and said, I found the pills. I asked What pills?
though I knew. The birth control pills. Are you having sex? 
Yes, I said, with pride. She whipped the words out,
fast as a striking snake, 
You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re too young. Are you in a relationship? 
Though I was, I said, No.  
Her face cinched tight and she turned in profile, considering her options.
And I could see her jaw shifting, slowly. She turned to face me 
and blurted, Who the hell are you having sex with? 
Different people, I said, though there was only one.
She flushed red and sound issued from deep in her throat. 
You … stop … now. Don’t you have any self-respect?! 
Do you want to be a slut?!
Do you want people to call you a slut?!
I’m going to tell the pharmacist to stop giving you the pill.
Then I’ll get pregnant, Mom, and people will certainly talk about that, 
I said with internal glee. Why are you doing this? 
she demanded, with fury closely held behind her teeth. After a long silence, 
I said, to play the field, Mom. To see what’s out there. 
Her face stiffened, tighter. Her lids clamped closed as she turned the ignition. 
Gripping the wheel tightly, she drove the AMC Pacer the twenty miles 
to our home, as I began to describe the boys who came to my mind
and the fantastical circumstances of our sex. 
I gave Red a blow job in the woods near School Street. 
I had sex with Daniel in our biology classroom after school … 
I struck out for myself, for a realm independent 
of my mother’s strictures, her angry enforcement.
And Miles, I said, (my actual boyfriend, who I adored), 
We’ve had sex a few times. And it was so good, I thought, 
our bodies straining, reaching for more, and more. 
I did not share this particular delight with my mother,
as it came close to an admission that there was only one boy. 
Her face was heavy with sadness and rage. 
Giddy, I leaned out the window of 
the obsolete Pacer and yelled out the names of 
my purported partners. I sang them out,
past the white Colonials on Walnut Street, 
prudish with their tiny windows and doors, 
past the dilapidated candy store on High Street 
whose charms I had outgrown, 
past the seamy, doldrum Seabrook dog track 
where I was not old enough to place bets,
and oh, so far past the home of Ann Fieldsend, 
the actual town tramp, who was currently pregnant.
Finally I sat, satisfied.
I remember my mother’s livid, punitive face, her roiling silence, 
her crippling grip on the wheel.
And it dawned on me, I’ve won,
and I resolved never to tell her the truth.
 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Elizabeth Hill: “I am a retired administrative law judge who decided suits between learning disabled children and their school systems. I live in Harlem, New York, with my husband and two irascible cats. I write poetry because I love words, and because I hope to connect with others’ emotions.”

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February 19, 2023

“I Ask AI to Write a Poem for My Lover” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

I ASK AI TO WRITE A POEM FOR MY LOVER

and it writes me a red flag. According to science,
love enters midlife crisis at 17 months. We are
at 11. Six more months, I tell him, until
the AI poem assembled from our woe-
and-woo world prophesizes our war.
But we’re having fun with this,
we’re piecing together a breadloaf
from crumbs like fire and flower.
Change flower, K says. We scroll
through a list of color and smell,
settle on lilies, cut and paste
them beside the lonely cursor.
He claims a poem is not just
the poem but the place it came
from too. I claim annoyance
with ether, with technology
selling water by the river.
And just as we want to scrape
together a sonnet, a power
cut obliterates the WiFi,
our screen goes black, the sonnet
of ones and zeroes yawns behind
the glass. We bite our lungs shut
in the prosthetic night, kiss like snow
on windshields. Our fingers flicker
against skin, trace a minefield
of muscle along spine. Clothes
crumble. Words linger like spiders
beneath the toilet bowl,
their bowstring legs attempting
to weave a world despite
all the shit. AI wouldn’t write
shit into a love poem, he says.
Wouldn’t feel the urge I do
to write you poems, fix you
dinner, speak to you differently
in bed than I do at the table.
Your words aren’t more yours
than in a poem. You do not own
language, but these birds
on a wire are yours alone.
 

—from Poets Respond
February 19, 2023

__________

Shannan Mann: “AI is going to be next year’s Poet Laureate.” (web)

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February 18, 2023

“Basho’s Frog” by Marvin BellPosted by

Marvin Bell

BASHO’S FROG

The plop of Basho’s famous frog
when it leapt into the pond,
thus seeming to pierce the ancient water,
which circled and instantly resealed itself,
offers us the chance
to crack the silence that overtook
the empires and their far flung armies
by hearing again that which
the armies could not kill. So, too,
those who traveled to New Zealand to see
the full eclipse firsthand were able
afterward to feel again the shiver
that overtook the land when the night arrived
ahead of time. And to remember
the cries of the roosters when it was over.
Basho’s frog at the plop!—
it’s the provable moment to be registered
among the plopping and croaking and wind
shaking the cherry blossoms
out of the trees while we were still on the road
going to see them.

—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008

__________

Marvin Bell: “It’s true that, no matter what, the literary world is full of insult. When you put yourself out to the public, you’re going to get some negative stuff. But writing just feels wonderful. I mean, I love the discovery aspect of writing. I love that. I love saying what I didn’t know I knew, not knowing where I’m headed, abandoning myself to the materials to figure out where I’m going. Of course your personality is going to come out of it, of course your obsessions are going to make themselves known, of course if you have a philosophic mind a matrix of philosophy will be behind things; everyone has a stance, an attitude, a vision, a viewpoint. All that will come out. But in the meantime, you’re just dog-paddling like mad. And that’s fun. That’s what I always liked about every art.”

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