March 4, 2024

Jeff Vande Zande

IN EARLY DRAFTS, ROBERT FROST RELIED HEAVILY ON THE THESAURUS

Discontinuing By Timberland
on a Fleecy Eventide
—Robert Frost

Whose copse this is I speculate I get.
His domicile is in the township, yet;
He won’t monitor me refraining here
To observe his pines congesting with wet.

My petite steed must reckon it bizarre
To knock off with the next shanty so far
Flanked by boscage and glaciated loch
The blackest eve of Earth’s loop around star.

He gives his tackle’s carillon a flap
As though he’s inquiring, “What the crap?”
The single other racket is the zoom
Of cozy zephyr and pubescent scrap.

The thicket is cute, sooty and abstruse.
But I’ve contracts that I don’t want to lose,
And 5,280 feet more until I snooze,
And 5,280 feet more until I snooze.

from Rattle #33, Summer 2010
Tribute to Humor

__________

Jeff Vande Zande: “I guess I was reading a lot of student papers in which students were compelled to try to make their papers sound ‘better’ by using the thesaurus. For instance, one student had been arguing why people should take up jogging and then, in the middle of the paper, started arguing why people should take up cantering. I thought it might be funny to rewrite a Frost poem under the premise that Frost was a thesaurus abuser. Then, after reading it, Tim Green said, ‘I like it, Jeff, but can you make it rhyme?’ That’s three hours of my life that I’ll never get back!” (web)

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February 24, 2024

Steven M. Smith

MONOPOLY

My son’s the sticky-fingered banker—
a vault of red licorice squeaks
in his mouth. He conducts business
from his wooden chair on his knees,
puffing on a fresh piece of licorice,
clutching his stack of $500 bills
as if the IRS is coming for his
fortune with a giant vacuum cleaner.
I’m responsible for the deeds.
I have the few remaining ones fanned
out like a questionable poker hand
on the dining room table.
I toss a handful of M&M’s—
such sweet analgesics—in my mouth
and wash them down with Kool-Aid.
Of course, my son’s got the car.
And I got the boot.
He’s got hotels like red parasites
from Pacific Avenue to Boardwalk.
And he controls the railroads too.
Landing on Luxury Tax would be
the answer to my prayers.
I just want to go to jail,
not pass Go and stay there;
the jail house shower is safer!
Well, I’ve mortgaged everything,
except my hotels on Cockroach Corner—
Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues.
I’m on Marvin Gardens, and it’s my
turn to toss those little evil
squares speckled with black holes.
I land on Chance, and I start to wipe
the sweat of bankruptcy from my face,
but then my son hears me whimper:
“Advance token to Boardwalk.”

from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
Tribute to the Best of Rattle

__________

Steven M. Smith: “I know that my students are not likely to remember the titles of the poems I bring to the class, but I trust that by bringing passion to my students, they will know it’s possible, and go out to find something in their lives to be passionate about. I know this is possible through poetry.”

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February 17, 2024

Julie Bruck

LOVE TO BUT

Our very important neighbor’s
fused to his new Cingular headset:
Now he can talk and walk.
Blah-blah-blah goes Mr. de Broff.
This makes it hard to hear
even the packs of feral dogs
howling all night, or the cats
doing what they do in our dark
fog-bound city gardens.
The world needs its chemistry
checked, that’s for sure.
The poisoned river is high,
fast at this time of year.
Fences between houses are down,
and we all like our boundaries.
Pharmacies? Closed.
All essential services, shut.
Time to fetch my daughter
from a birthday party which
ended in 1963, but she runs late.
Sometimes, I have to pry her
from the door-jamb, carry
her to the car like a small,
warm totem pole with sneakers.
A yellow Hummer slipped
through a crack in our street
on Tuesday: not seen nor
heard from since, despite
the crowd of looky-lu’s,
still milling around out there.
Love to. But these are
strange times. I could
expire before I meet
you at the gate. Yessir.
Love to. Toothache.
Can’t.

from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

_________

Julie Bruck: “To decline, to refuse, dig in one’s heels, to resist like a small dog its leash—I find that gesture so alluring, such a sweet, guilty pleasure. Writing ‘Love to But’ also furnished an opportunity to complain (another underrated pastime) about a neighbor who considers mobile phone use a public harangue even as the world ends. Doh! I guess Mr. de B. and the speaker of this poem aren’t so different.”

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February 15, 2024

Jessica Moll

COSTUME

Our game’s a cross between A Chorus Line
and Fame. Rehearsals, here in our backyard.
Pretend the lawn’s the stage. The tutu’s mine,
but I let David pick a leotard.
I’m ten, he’s five, he’s used to all my rules.
He gets to be a girl, but has to choose
a neutral name like “Chris.” Summer fog rolls
in. We swirl our glitter scarves to music
in our heads. He’s got it down, the girl
pose: hips, hands. He’s not a boy. He won’t play
out front, racing Big Wheels. Instead, he twirls
barefoot with me. But what about the place
my fingers found, underneath my clothes?
The grass is cold. Plié. And point your toes.
 

from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet

__________

Jessica Moll: “Since I just wrote a sonnet yesterday, today I’d like to rest. My fingers ache from tapping syllables against the desk. I haven’t slept—the loud iambic tick’s a clock inside my head. I hate the task I give myself, of cramming my mind’s sprawl into the structure of a formal poem. I think the next time that a sonnet calls, I won’t answer. I’ll pretend I’m not home. But watch, tomorrow I’ll be riding down a pitted Oakland street, pedaling hard to get to work on time, and as I spin, I’ll feel the meter in my pulse and start to think in rhyme. You’ve had this kind of lover—as soon as you break up, you’re back together.”

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February 8, 2024

John Yohe

THE GHOST OF FRANK O’HARA

The ghost of Frank O’Hara taps me on
the shoulder whispering
and what about
the humor what about talks with the sun
and things that happen at the movies out
of sight of parents don’t forget the thirst
of being in Manhattan in the heat
and Coke the drink
remember too your first
love passion music though it might not come out
in words it’s there in you but I was sad
and said what good is humor in a poem
when people die Manhattan Fire Island
we
bought falafels which we thought weren’t bad
and walked to Central Park for space and some
children were laughing and he said ask them

from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet

__________

John Yohe: “I wrote this poem in late 2001 or early 2002, and found working within a form helped me say things I wouldn’t have normally said. I had been thinking about the 9/11 attacks, wondering how Frank O’Hara would have responded and, in the same way he talked to the sun, I decided to talk to him. The phrase ‘the ghost of Frank O’Hara’ was in iambic, the rest of the poem sort of flowed out.” (web)

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January 30, 2024

Salah al Hamdani

BAGHDAD, MON AMOUR

You cannot be crucified
On the side of a page
Of a story that is not your own,
Nor to the rhythm of the deaths that brood your plagues
Because there will be no cry to relieve your grief.

You cannot be crucified on the banks of the streams
Your body bleeds,
When the Euphrates washes away the secret of its soul
At the birth of a new defeat.
I know this:
No wound deserves a war.

You cannot be crucified at nightfall,
When you did not close your prayers
On the body of palm trees
Because there is no honorable assassin.

You cannot be crucified for the cinders of calamities,
For the tombs of your gods,
Or for the belief of a dying humanity.

Baghdad mon amour,
Not son, nor father, nor God,
No prophet crowned by the church will save your soul,
Not that of Mecca,
Not that of those who refuse
To share the olive trees in Palestine.

This is my notebook of war,
The years of exiles folded in a suitcase
Too long abandoned to the dreams of the convicted.

This is my share of victims,
My share of moon,
My harvest of nothingness,
My share of dust, words and cries.

This is my misfortune
Like a comma locking a line of ink.

Baghdad my love,
I was crouched in the corner of the page
In the shelter of the arid days,
Far from the torrents of blood
That carry the name of those shot with the silence of man.

Baghdad, mon amour,
Sitting like a Bedouin in a mirage
Lying on my shores, I cherished my own shroud.
Far from the cross, Fatima’s palm and the star of David
Far from their books, their wars
Wandering in the sand of the dunes,
From the steppe to the city
I drag my body from season to season,
I trail you along from the couch to the mirror, from my room to the street
Between my writing and my solitude
In the shelter of their cemeteries,
Their martyrs, their morgues.

Baghdad my love,
You cannot tremble at the threshold of these ruins of days,
A civilization trained to kill
Violated your virginity.

Baghdad, city forever rebellious against your torturer Saddam,
You cannot groan at the only revelation of this hegemony,
Those who rushed around your body at death’s door,
These “liberators” are their accomplices.

Madinat-al Salam,
City of peace,
Love in the soul of writing.

Baghdad my wound,
My father the working man died without knowing joy,
My mother mislaid her youth in the mirror
And the only witness to my first grief on your breast
Is the breath of the sand,
The starry sky and God’s gaze on the call to prayer.

I wished so much today that man had never discovered fire
And cursed it to advance so much in its own din.

This soil that gave birth to me, today put to death.
Oh mother! I want to return inside your flesh

To hear the beating of your heart,
To quench my thirst in the murmur of your breath.

Translated by Molly Deschenes from Le cimetiere des oiseaux (editions de l’aube, Paris, 2003)

from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
Tribute to Poets Writing Abroad

__________

Salah al Hamdani has lived as an Iraqi exile in France for nearly thirty years. He left Iraq after a stay in prison, and continues to fight against the henchmen of Saddam Hussein, as well as the Anglo-American occupants. The actor, director, and poet is author of several books, both in Arabic and French.

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January 4, 2024

Bruce McRae

GRASS IN MY HAIR

I was arguing
with the scarecrow.
His voice
was like a wall
of sand coming
closer and closer.
He had corn
on his breath
but no mouth
to speak of.
His mind
was a straw stalk
in the wind,
all the colours
of a golden
rainbow, there,
but not there,
even his pinstripes
soil-scented.
And I was saying
to the scarecrow,
“We end,
we begin.”
I was telling him
the true names
of all the dead.
I was asking
a stupid question:
“Where’s the crow
inside my head?”
Which he thought
quite funny,
a perpetual grin
on his dried lips,
his eyes seeing
into the far distance,
a tear forming
in the new silence
that summer, and he
impeccably dressed.

from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

__________

Bruce McRae: “‘Grass In My Hair’ was written in bed during the summer of 2008. In fact, all my poems are written lying down. It was inspired by the heat of August, a cornfield from my youth in Southern Ontario, and The Wizard of Oz.” (web)

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