February 17, 2023

“Augury” by Jennifer GriffithPosted by

Jennifer Griffith

AUGURY

I’d been bleeding for a year when we unsexed the frog. 
Cold and pungent from formaldehyde, it lay with limbs 
splayed and pinned to the tray. The science teacher 
lectured about the arrangement of a frog’s organs, how 
similar they are to ours, that dissection helps us learn
 
the way our bodies work too. We’d been studying 
frogs for days; my lab partner and I were sick of them, 
so, we relieved ours of its reproductive parts, flicked 
them out the window, chipped pink nails launching 
tiny gray entrails to the snowy pavement outside
 
the decaying junior high that looked like a penitentiary.
Inside, biology was wild; boys dumped bottles of fox lure
in the radiators, stole a Fiesta Barbie from the Spanish
lab, denuded her and hung her from the cafeteria blinds. 
Someone in homeroom had a crush on me, but he smelled 
 
like cigarettes and dirty socks, was in the slow courses,
and went around with sticky streaks of pot resin down 
the legs of his jeans. It’s called “amplexus” when a male 
amphibian wraps himself around the female and releases 
his sperm on the tapioca pearls of her eggs. In French class,
 
our teacher smeared crimson lipstick on her mouth like a wound. 
She came to school sick most days and taught us the language 
of the body: maux de gorge, maux d’estomac, la jambe blessée,  
Or, like a certain frog, malade dans les trompes de Fallope,
malade dans les ovaires. In the third-floor bathroom, I watched 
 
a tall, blonde eighth grader pound an anxious, primitive 
rhythm on the broken Kotex machine. A scarlet Rorschach 
bloomed across the ass of her white pants, the red blot shaped 
like West Virginia, or maybe a human heart, la coeur.
When tadpoles turn into frogs, their external gills move 
 
inward and evolve into lungs. In water, frogs breathe 
through their skins, but they cannot feel love. My own body 
had become a violin; some days I thought if I drew a bow 
across myself, I could cry a concerto. During study hall, 
the boy behind me arranged my long hair in a pile on his desk, 
 
lay his head down in it and slept. I listened to the soft 
sounds of his breath while I did algebra problems—oxygen, 
nitrogen, variables, and equations mingling in the air. 
 

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

__________

Jennifer Griffith: “I began writing poetry when I was a child and have always been fascinated by why we remember some things in our lives and totally forget others. ‘Augury’ came from my exploring various moments I recall from middle school, and, through writing the poem, I discovered that those seemingly random memories, whose commonalities appeared to be only time and proximity to one another, were actually topically and symbolically analogous and revealed a body rather than just an assortment of parts. So I guess you could say I write poetry to galvanize fragments into flesh.” (web)

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February 16, 2023

“Sweet Peas” by Patricia CrawfordPosted by

Patricia Crawford

SWEET PEAS

All along the back fence
Tucked between the incinerator
And the clothesline, hidden from view
Meandered the prodigal sweet peas.
Lassoed with chicken wire
Climbing up and over the fence.
Reaching through the smog filter
To the sunshine.
 
The whole fence was a wash of color
A secret wall of delight.
I wandered down the row,
Woozy with their perfume
Wishing I didn’t have to exhale
Between inhales—just take
All the swoony sweetness inside
And keep it there.
 

—from Rattle #7, Summer 1997

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February 15, 2023

“Basic Needs” by Sarah EdererPosted by

Sarah Ederer

BASIC NEEDS

Listen,
I could tell you about the hot cat shit
That lay in the hallway
Just outside of my mother’s bedroom
Nestled into itself on the floor
Like a sleeping dog.
 
I could tell you that,
Like a sleeping dog,
We stepped over it carefully.
Like a sleeping dog,
We walked past it every day and
Most of the time
We ignored it.
 
I could say that we treated it like a part of the backdrop
A landmark of home
Hanging in the air under our noses
Like a soft-baked pretzel
Comforting and familiar
And you might think that I’ve said enough
For you to understand just how outrageous the situation was
But I haven’t.
 
The truth is,
The cat shit never bothered me that much.
Not at first.
There was a brief moment of disgust,
Sure,
But that moment would end
As quickly as I could take one step
And get over it.
Then I was in another room and,
As far as I was concerned,
The cat shit was gone.
 
What bothered me
About the pile of cat shit in the hallway
Was what I suspect would bother anyone:
How shameful it was
To be living that way.
But that shame wasn’t something I could access
In the folie-a-quatre
That was my childhood home.
 
I became aware of the shame much later in life,
Found it wafting over me one night,
When my own family’s dog
Had an accident
At the foot of my bed
And I got up to clean it
without thinking.
It was an automatic response:
There’s shit on the floor
It must be removed
Remove it.
 
It struck me like a freighter
That I had been robbed for sixteen years
Of something I felt that I was entitled to,
But never received.
I couldn’t quite put that thing into words,
But it amounted roughly to
“The right to not have to step over piles of cat shit
Every goddamned day of my life.”
 
Then the shame arrived
In its fullest form:
A revelation
About the burden of secrecy.
I had spent sixteen years of my life
pretending that the pile of cat shit wasn’t there
Waiting for me
When I got home from school.
I got so good at pretending
That sometimes I wasn’t even aware
That there was a pile of cat shit
Waiting for me,
For my mother,
Outside of her bedroom door.
But the cat shit was always there,
Lingering,
An ornament of a broken home.
 
The cat shit was there
When I kissed my first boyfriend.
The cat shit was there
When he fingered me in the car outside
And I lied and said my parents were home
So he couldn’t come in.
I stepped over the cat shit
And fell into my bed
And dreamed of him kissing me,
Touching me,
Touched myself to the thought of it
All while the cat shit,
Sun-dried and brittle,
Shifted with the floorboards,
With the weight of the house,
With its damned foundation,
Settling lopsided into the hole
Where the previous owner’s septic tank was
Until it eventually collapsed.
I spent sixteen years
Falling into someone else’s shit.
 
They kept twelve cats I never wanted
And they asked me
“How could you not want them?”
As if I was cruel
They called me Bob Barker
I repeated it so many times:
Spay the damn things.
You can be buried alive
By a certain kind of love
One that I’m not so convinced
Is kind at all.
But the cat shit wasn’t what bothered me.
Not really.
What bothered me
Is what I lost under the hordes of cheap, dysfunctional garbage
That my mother compulsively lifted
From flea markets,
Dollar stores,
Yard sales,
And clothing exchanges.
A book of nursery rhymes,
A keyless trumpet,
A mummified tangerine,
And a dressmaking dummy,
Buried under soiled laundry,
Buried under moldy dishes,
Buried under childhood photos
In frames with broken glass.
Buried somewhere under
The junk that nobody wanted
Was my family.
It became difficult to distinguish between the two.
 
I wondered to myself,
Standing next to a puddle of cleanser
At the foot of my adult bed,
Why I had never cleaned the cat shit
In my childhood home,
Why I stepped over it every time.
A form of protest, maybe
A sinking sense that it would never end
That twelve cats could shit faster than I could clean it,
That flea markets,
Dollar stores,
Yard sales,
And clothing exchanges
Never ran out of junk,
That I was a child
Who had a right to something
That I never received.
 

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

__________

Sarah Ederer: “To me, writing poetry feels a bit like lancing a boil and sending a ‘thank you’ card to the pus. I tend to use free verse narrative fiction to tell the untellable stories of people marginalized by the taboo nuances of a life lived under oppressive domestic conditions. I hope to help make experiences that might make one feel unintelligible to the world a little more easily understood by emphasizing the humanity and dignity of the protagonist.”

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February 14, 2023

“Every Friday” by Thomas MixonPosted by

Thomas Mixon

EVERY FRIDAY

Every Friday growing up I’d get a chance
to get shot down. I’d ask someone to dance
and mostly they’d say no. I’d say OK
and plan next Friday’s move. On the fray
of the middle school cafeteria, I’d tilt
my head in time with music. I’d jilt
anyone who tried to comfort me
until the lights came on. I’d flee
into my mother’s minivan, wishing
it a smaller car. She’d be fishing
for some idea of how things went.
I’d say something false like I meant
it, something I assumed she wanted
to hear. I was dull and daunted
by the week ahead. I’d look out
the window, remember how devout
I was, three years before. I’d sworn
back then I saw the glowing horns
and nose of Rudolph in the sky.
Maybe it had started as a lie,
I’d said, but I’d known what I saw.
Till puberty I believed in Santa.
Every Friday after aches and hair
consumed my body, I would spare
no mental expense, imagining
the one I’d choose, fashioning
them into everything no single
person could be. I didn’t mingle
with the children chickening
out. I only felt the sickening
dread until the first slow song,
upon which I would make the long
journey to the one that could forever
change Fridays’ bad luck, and sever
everything that was, from what could be.
The times that someone would agree
were rare, but worth it. Afterward
I’d fly, not run, a newborn bird
expecting trees, but only finding sky.
I’d open the van’s door and wouldn’t lie
to my mother. I’d ask if she recalled
the Christmas light I’d been enthralled
by, back when I was young.
She’d say you’re still young,
and I’d say no, and she would sigh,
and while she drove guess where I looked.
 

—from Poets Respond
February 14, 2023

__________

Thomas Mixon: “I wrote this on the second Friday in a row of unexpected objects being tracked, then shot down from the clouds. I thought back to middle school dances, those Fridays, that excitement, dejection. I thought back to thinking I saw something magical in the sky, when I was young, only to then grow up, and know better.” (web)

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February 13, 2023

“Palimpsest” by George BilgerePosted by

George Bilgere

PALIMPSEST

We’re bicycling through the Tiergarten
on a summer morning in Berlin,
my wife and I, our son in his bike seat,
and it really is a lovely day, except
someone has spray painted in red,
dripping cursive on the marble pedestals
of the statues of the great poets
and composers scattered around the park, 
Juden Raus, Jews Out, and my first thought 
is, hey, my German is getting better, 
I figured that out right away, 
even though the handwriting is poor,
but of course the author was working
in the dark, and under a certain pressure, 
so really, you can’t blame him, and besides,
the quality of the handwriting isn’t
the point here, nor is my progress
in German, which in most respects
has been disappointing. The point
is that we have a bottle of wine
and some ham and cheese sandwiches
and we’re going to make the best of it,
we’re going to spread the blanket
and have a picnic here in the not entirely
new Germany, that bad last century
still bleeding into this one, blood
still soaking the feet of the poets,
while our little boy, new to history,
runs laughing under a blazing sun 
through the green illiterate meadows.
 

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

__________

George Bilgere: “One day last summer my five-year-old son walked in from the backyard and dropped a pill bug on the dining room table where I was eating my scrambled eggs. ‘Pill bugs are the dinosaurs of the backyard,’ he told me gravely. And I thanked him, because now I had an idea for a new poem. As anyone who has kids knows, they are born poets. The trick is to help them hold onto it as the distractions of adulthood loom.” (web)

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February 12, 2023

“When 5,000 People Die in an Instant” by Michael MarkPosted by

Michael Mark

WHEN 5,000 PEOPLE DIE IN AN INSTANT

How much money do you send? How
long do you shake your head for? Or wait,
after you see the report uptick to 5,300, before
you wonder about lunch? Give some post
a like? Touch your face, reminding yourself
you are still here, that this is what it feels like
to be alive, the same alive those 5,700 people felt
minutes ago. You look up to count the bumps
on the popcorn ceiling—try to make it to 5,900
knowing the number will be higher by the time
you’re half done, is already higher, 6,200, 6,800
and it is too much to count. You close your eyes,
imagine it’s you—there—your family, friends. You
see each one of them, so close—the pores in their faces,
flecks in their eyes, and only move on to the next
when you can feel their breath as they breathe
their name. How long between misery and luck and
guilt and gratitude and terror and acceptance and hope—
how long between refreshes for updates—guessing
at the next number and putting the 7,300, the 7,600,
the 7,900 behind you, deciding to send more money
knowing that it will not be enough or writing something
knowing even if you’re a Nobel Laureate it won’t be
enough. So, you get on a plane. You don’t have
a ticket, you rush to the airport, wait on standby,
take the last middle seat. It doesn’t matter how many—
it could even be one person you pull from the rubble.
They don’t have to be a child. They could be anyone,
any age, any shape, any color. They don’t even have
to be alive—they could be one of the 8,000, 9,000,
10,000, 11,000. Now it’s 12,000. Now it’s 20,000.
You dig with your bare hands and reach down and pull
them out. It’s all you can do but you won’t, you don’t,
you can’t, you don’t. Now it’s 28,192.
 

—from Poets Respond
February 12, 2023

__________

Michael Mark: “The first report was 4,300 dead. We knew it was going to be higher. How can the human being deal with this beyond imaginable horror. We must imagine. We must do all we can do in the face of not enough.” (web)

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February 11, 2023

“Adult Night at Skate World” by Christina KalleryPosted by

Christina Kallery

ADULT NIGHT AT SKATE WORLD

You’d think it was an eighth grade dance,
the way we stand shyly eying each other
when the first slow notes sound for couples’ skate.

A fifty-ish man in a striped headband
and custom skates fit with blinking lights
asks would I mind? So we roll from the worn

carpet onto the glossy floor. One hand on my waist,
he gazes at a far wall and sings in high, quivering
tones to Endless Love. We pass a dozen

other couples: office managers in sport shirts,
single mothers squeezed into new jeans
and a few lone ones gliding through the tide of clasped hands.

Take the handsome Indian man with dark hair swept
like a raven’s wings from its stern middle part,
the moustache trimmed to a neat em-dash.

He moves like a figure skater, one long leg aloft
behind his jump-suited frame. No woman here tonight
can match his prowess as he weaves easy figure eights,

turns and sails backwards without a glance;
though I imagine his likely office job, manning
some cubicle in a gray and taupe-y sea

and the gaping dark that crouches nightly at his door.
Now the rink’s Robert Plant commands the floor
beneath a silver disco orb and twirls once, twice,

a third time, pretending not to watch us
watching him. In his prime in ’85, that bleached
mass of frizzed-out curls would have bobbed radiant

under hot stage lights during the guitar solo,
his attention rapt to the art at hand, yet aware
as a preening animal of the lip-glossed girls

in the front row whose eyes simmered
with envy and desire. But the gigs
have fizzled into soundlessness,

the Dodge van scrapped, the red guitar lies
long untuned in its velvet chamber
and each Sunday at eight he pulls the black skates

from their nook and somehow finds a rhythm
not unlike rock and roll in this dim-lit dome
with its carnival colors and claw machine and women

fluffing their hair in restroom mirrors.
Just overhead hover the sour divorces,
languished careers, botched plans, those hours when life

took a sharp turn toward the inscrutable
and left us older and daunted in its wake.
But when the DJ calls the night’s last song, we—

the lonesome and afraid, the jaded
and lost—peer through strobe lights
for somebody, if not lovable, then not a lunatic

and sing to a tune we first heard the summer
someone else left and we wept against a cool steering wheel
and felt the world spin, fierce and marvelous beneath our feet.

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005

__________

Christina Kallery: “I spent my childhood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where I learned the following: toads do not like dollhouses, snow pants are universally unflattering and Duran Duran will never, ever schedule a tour date in Marquette. Keats’ ‘Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil’ was the first poem that emotionally affected me. When I was sixteen, I came across it in an old, beat-up library book and literally wept when I got to the scene where Isabella’s lover’s ghost appears at her bed. I still haven’t entirely lost my Romantic sensibility—sometimes to my chagrin. I still love poems that resonate at an emotional level.” (web)

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