January 31st, 2009
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Jennifer Gresham
HALFWAY HOUSE FOR THE INCOHERENT
She gathered them from the edges
of cities like wildflowers,
gave them each a glass of water.
When she tried drawing a map,
it turned into a tangle of roots.
In their hands, compass needles
flew in circles like a flock
of frightened birds. So they stayed—
wandered aimlessly through her garden,
the graveyard with all its lovely,
loose stones. They shared the habit
of constantly licking their lips.The papers said she was running
some kind of cult, but that wasn’t true.
There were no fences, nor any
conversations at dinner. She told them
stories at night of following the train
tracks all the way from Kansas
to the ocean. They couldn’t understand,
so she had them draw their fingers
down the bone of her arm. Like this,
she said, but straighter.
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
January 30th, 2009
Review by Cameron Conaway
VOICES
by Lucille Clifton
BOA Editions, LTD
250 N. Goodman Street, Suite 306
Rochester, NY 14607
ISBN: 978-1-934414-12-5
2008, 64 pp., $16.00
www.boaeditions.org
Lucille ordered broccoli for her side. “My doctor says it’ll keep me going,” she whispered to me.
Vivace Restaurant is considered by many to be the best we have here in Tucson. So it’s where we took Lucille to eat when she came out to give a reading at St. Philips in the Hills Episcopal Church and to christen our new Poetry Center.
I arrived early to Vivace’s lobby. And shook. A 22-year-old who began to creatively write just two years ago, who was teaching Lucille’s “homage to my hips” at local high schools, was now attending an intimate dinner with an absolute legend. I was as nervous to be in Lucille’s presence as I was in the presence of a chain-linked cage before my mixed martial arts fights.
“They’ve basically taken me apart and put me back together again,” she said during dinner with a matter-of-factness and a smile that both stung and made us laugh.
January 29th, 2009
Jonathan Greenhause
FIRE FLOWERS
In Japanese, the word for “office” is a character composing
two smaller characters meaning “enclosed space”
and “slumping corpse.”
Outside, a soft rain’s falling on what was once the corner deli
but is now an immense pile
of pipes and bricks, chips of cement, and crumpled menus.
I used to eat there with my wife, who’s no longer my wife but rather
someone’s girlfriend. We used to order a plate of cheese fries
and discuss the feasibility of being married,
not knowing we could have more efficiently spent that time
doing something else, like organizing an expedition to the Arctic
or handing out flyers to save the corner deli
from its eventual demolishment.
If I turn on the TV set, I’ll no doubt be reminded that today’s not Saturday
and tomorrow’s not Sunday, and whatever I decide to watch
will simply be a way not to think about what I’m not doing.
On these days between the days I’m actually living,
relatives occasionally call to assure themselves I’m still breathing,
telling me small details I could do without, while in their voices’ dark corners
I hear their latent, unfulfilled desires, and part of me
wishes to take their hands and guide them towards the unknown,
but just as I’m reaching out, grazing their invisible skin,
the connection’s cut, breaking them loose into their lonely longing.
On my coffee breaks, I muse on the metaphysical consequences
of a slumping corpse in an enclosed space,
and I think how our word for “fireworks” is practical, but in Japanese
it’s literally a “fire flower,” which I find to be inherently more poetic:
“If you look into the sky at this very moment
you may see flowers composed of fire,” and you may see stars
exhaling their last breaths onto a coal canvas,
momentarily warming the vast frozen space.
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
January 28th, 2009
Link • Poems, Tributes • 2 Comments
KIP DEEDS: “‘Walden, Sprawl, and All’ began with a drawing of a cabin, inspired in part by my own experience of cabin-living in Michigan. Although this drawing went unresolved for two years, I began doing watercolor tests on the paper in the summer of 2007. By autumn I was developing a sprawling urban landscape around the cabin, in contrast to the more placid central image. The text adds commentary to the inevitable contrast between the quiet, solitary life and the pervasiveness of so-called modern progress. ‘Elevated Findings’ began as a study of a piece of furniture in the poet Janée J. Baugher’s Seattle home. On tiers of shelves is an arrangement of office supplies and knick-knacks. Among these items I added some of my own objects. The text in the scroll tells a story and presents a tour through the shelves and curiosities.”
Click the image for a larger version:
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
Tribute to Visual Poetry
January 27th, 2009
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Pamela Garvey
WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY, 1989
In only the thin fog of moonlight,
only the dull yellow bulbs lining the park’s path,
two students—unnamed, spared
from photographs—perched on coolers
and flung their cane poles into the pond, a perfect oval
with nowhere to go, little to offer:
just some overgrown goldfish and darters,
small trophies or jewels they held—
skin rubbing scales for a moment—then tossed back.
But something went wrong, and you know this happens.
And if they could unbury the moment,
what would they find? Would they tell us?
I’d like to think the last beer charmed them blind.
But what if they were living their truest moment
when they grabbed, or one grabbed, the female swan,
holding her down so the other could punch her,
kick her? They took turns bruising her
because that’s all they knew; they’d seen the pond in daylight
bruised with petals and swirling reflections of clouds
swallowing the swans into spreading shade,
and they loved the shade. Even more, they loved the night
for blurring distinctions, so when one man, one boy,
wrapped his arms around the swan’s neck, he felt her becoming
a part of himself, and he didn’t know it meant
the hunted becomes what it nourishes
but simply tore off her head and held it
the way a pet cat carries the mouse it kills
like a prize, a gift.
–from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
