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April 11, 2024

“The Wedding Doll” by Nancy BeaglePosted by

Nancy Beagle

THE WEDDING DOLL

She boxed me—saving me, she said, for the wedding.
She shall be my centerpiece, stand next to the cake.
That was when she was twelve.
 
I was a birthday gift to a girl who loved dolls. A girl who had
dreams, pictured herself, apron-clad, in a sunny kitchen
fixing pot roast for a husband, four children.
 
It is now 65 years later, and I’m stuck up in the attic,
like a child’s cradle outgrown or a rocking horse
no longer needed. And I am still in the turquoise box
 
with magenta lettering proclaiming Madame Alexander.
We, the most cherished dolls of the era. This was
before Barbie, Cabbage Patch kids, and American Girl.
 
My box itself has begun to collapse, its corners broken,
its top dented from move after move. The wedding dress
I wear now is tainted—tea brown with age. The lace
 
delicate, ready to dissolve at the touch. My face, too, is
cracked, but my blue eyes are still open. She takes me
out now and then and witnesses time, acknowledges
 
that I never got that center spotlight—nor did she.
How do I feel having been boxed for decades? How does
she feel never having had a man to hold at night,
 
children to embrace? She, too, has been in a box. Hers
constructed of societal expectations. No less imprisoned
than I. Do I pity her? Not really. She had choices whereas
 
I had none. She could have, at any time, lifted her lid,
flown over the edge.
 

—from Prompt Poem of the Month
March 2024

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Prompt: Write a poem from the perspective of one of your childhood toys.

Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “The twirling between the doll and the speaker in Nancy’s poem invites us to get lost in the ruffles of regret. At once exploring our need to cherish and to be cherished, as well as to love and to be loved, the honesty in this poem unboxes a trove of emotion.”

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March 24, 2024

“Abecedarian for Alabama Libraries” by Pamela ManascoPosted by

Pamela Manasco

ABECEDARIAN FOR ALABAMA LIBRARIES

Alder to ash: what can be sacrificed,
boned, defanged, let it be. Burn it to
cinders to keep children civil.
Don’t end until not only paper’s
extinguished, but cards & computers, too.
Florida can’t win this heat. Don’t forget
gardens—sensory, learning—the kids’ tract,
hay mulched over marigold seeds
in the beds too early, and inside,
juried tables of books for belonging.
Keep matches to snuff out even
labels, hands that write, seed-like ideas—
maybe then it will be enough.
Never fix the broken down bridge
over Selma, unwalkable routes to food
pantries, potholes blowing tires, unfeeling,
quiet. Never pay the school lunch debts
rolling month to month. Why must we feed
starving children? Make sure they’re born,
that’s your job done. Do all in your power
until you have it all, so we look back with
vertigo at everything you took from us with
white noise. Don’t pay for college, for
Xanax, for unkillable hospital bills, and
years from now, we will not be 50th but
zero, praying daily at your altar.
 

—from Poets Respond
March 24, 2024

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Pamela Manasco: “This poem responds to the recent firing of several employees at a Prattville, Alabama, library, which itself is related to the recent decision of the Alabama Senate to pass SB10, a bill which allows local city councils to fire library board members. After Prattville library director Andrew Foster publicly shared emails from a board member who requested that some juvenile library materials be moved or removed from the library, Foster was fired without the board of trustees providing information about which library rule he supposedly violated. Later, four librarians closed the library in response to the firing—and they were also fired. It’s a messy story and a scary one which shows the future Alabama’s Republican government members want: remove any library material which violates ‘Alabama values’ (good luck finding a definition for those, by the way), and fire anyone who disagrees.” (web)

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March 21, 2024

“Things That Collapse” by Jonathan HarrisPosted by

Graphing Uncertainty V by Christine Crockett, abstract painting of lines and triangles in red and black

Image: “Graphing Uncertainty V” by Christine Crockett. “Things That Collapse” was written by Jonathan Harris for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Jonathan Harris

THINGS THAT COLLAPSE

Slumped in a lawn chair under a pink umbrella a hand fan on his belly
in a jackknifing heat that’s me I see now and those are my children
coming for me from our rose bed gone-under. They lay me
on the earth and fall in tight my son at my heart splitting
stones on my chest. On her knees and cell with 911
my daughter traces half/faces the wrinkles
on my forehead. She bends closer after
ending the call coos in my ear ruffling
her ringlets: orphans, origami, tents,
tables, tarantulas, hammocks,
accordions, waves. At least
those are the notes I’m
vaguely aware of
but find hard to
swallow.
A
slap on the cheek a shrug by my shoulders my children
cry out: Dad! Dad! Don’t leave us! Don’t you dare
leave us! Then together scoop me up
in their arms and won’t let go as if
everything in our top-down top-
heavy world hinges
on the screws
holding.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Christine Crockett: “This poem handles the ekphrastic challenge with such craft and imagination. The concrete format of two ‘collapsing’ triangles not only mirrors the geometry of the collage, but also captures something profoundly human in its composition. The organic roundness of red at the center of the college is a pulsing, endangered heart. The first triangle tapers as the stricken narrator’s consciousness streams and ebbs into single-word utterances, each a play on triangular or folded forms: accordions, origami, tents. A heartbeat pause, then the poem pivots into the ‘slap’ and embrace of his son and daughter who revive him, ‘hinge’ him back into the widening world–bloodlines that stave off the ‘top-down-top-heavy’ world that threatens collapse.”

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June 22, 2023

“You Don’t Have to Choose” by Beth CopelandPosted by

A Lonesome Border by Carmella Dolmer, marker drawing of two shadowy figures looking down into a dark hole

Image: “A Lonesome Border” by Carmella Dolmer. “You Don’t Have to Choose” was written by Beth Copeland for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2023, and selected as an Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Beth Copeland

YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE

Between the cube and the circle,
the container or the eddying drain,
 
the cardboard box or the manhole,
the collapsing star or the burning house,
 
the fiery floor or the raspberry arch that becomes a rainbow
after a thunder storm,
 
the missing door or the haloed saints that hover
in the Tuscan afterglow,
 
the embodied self or the shadow
holding your hand,
 
the green selvage of the world
where everything grows—grass, kudzu, weeping willows,
 
or the waterless well you might mistake
for an open window.
 
Yes, you have free will. Yes, you have a voice.
Not choosing is also a choice.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2023, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the way this poem begins as a literal, generalized description of Carmella Dolmer’s piece—‘the cube and the circle’—and then progressively becomes more abstract and metaphorical—‘the haloed saints that hover,’ ‘the waterless well.’ Like the artwork, whose rich simplicity hints at more complex truths, ‘You Don’t Have to Choose’ seems to suggest that the cube and the circle are archetypal here, and the poet vividly and imaginatively explores this symbolism. The last stanza completely detaches from the imagistic nature of the rest of the poem to deliver objective statements, and the creative whiplash of this transition, combined with the undiluted truth of the statements themselves, renders the ending affecting and meaningful.”

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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

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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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January 14, 2023

“Freedom” by Elizabeth Klise von ZerneckPosted by

Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck

FREEDOM

Haight Street

The realtor claimed the flat was lived in once
by Janis Joplin, a quite common claim,

we later learned. The tactic worked on us.
We learned to overlook—that hint of fame!—

the smell of gas, an awkward floor plan, soot
that never scoured. We dwelled not there but on

our plum address and, when fall came, we bought
dark Goodwill coats, the nights much colder than

we had foreseen. Through that long year, we read
Jacques Derrida, and smoked, and grew fresh thyme

on the one sill with light. We baked wheat bread—
well, one loaf anyway—and drank red wine,

and each day died a bit—twenty, confused—
two other words for nothing left to lose.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet

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Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck: “I used to write fiction, and the first line of this poem was one I had in my head for years as the first sentence of a story. Nothing came of it. When I started to write poetry, I recalled the line—iambic, after all—and the poem followed quickly, almost as if it wrote itself. It knew what it wanted to be more than I did.”

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June 19, 2022

“Frank Lloyd Wright Pantoum” by Morgan EklundPosted by

Morgan Eklund

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT PANTOUM

Frank Lloyd Wright was a terrible father,
But I like his houses and windows.
His horizontal lines, I want to be those dark beams.
I like his late prairie style, the Emil Bach house up the street from where I live.
 
I like his houses and windows,
But he abandoned his family in 1909 and left for Europe with his mistress.
I like his late prairie style, the Emil Bach house up the street from where I live.
My father has never seen this house, up the street from where I live.
 
He abandoned his family in 1909 and left for Europe with his mistress.
How do I still love the houses and windows the terrible father built?
My father has never seen this house, up the street from where I live.
Even after the caretaker plants yellow mums in the fall.
 
How do we still love the houses and windows the terrible father built?
His horizontal lines, I want to be those dark beams.
Even after the caretaker plants yellow mums in the fall,
Frank Lloyd Wright was a terrible father.
 

—from Poets Respond
June 19, 2022

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Morgan Eklund: “The good, the bad, and the ugly—Father’s Day is a moment of celebration or reflection. What does this myth, this statue, this cultural icon mean to me? To better understand my own father, I’ve spent the last few years on a collection of poems about fathers, including this one about Frank Lloyd Wright, whose 155th birthday was last week. The more I look, the more I am sure—I’ll never understand the enigma we call dad.” (web)

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