May 31st, 2009
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Gabrielle Mittelbach
THE BEGINNING OF A LONG NIGHT
Someday I will miss this, I know.
I will miss the dog hairs on my bed
and the bed clothes rumpled into a tent
when I get home from work at six o’clock.
I’ll miss the yellow crayon scribbled
on the TV screen that’s been there
since Kids-Eat-Free night at Denny’s.
I will miss the odor of burnt mustard,
exploded marshmallows and the thick coils
of smoke that emanated from the microwave
on that seemingly quiet afternoon. My son
laughed at me for an hour after that incident.
He repeated my moans of horror over and over,
like when I read him his favorite book again and again.
Now it is past midnight and he is beside me
in his Batman pajamas and his snores
lull me like the gentle motion of a late night
car ride home and I complain, I know.
I complain about how he snores and how,
when he sleeps, his little feet always seem
to find their way to the crook of my neck.
It’s not so far off that I will miss them,
those little feet. Someday, I will watch them
as they walk away from me slowly, surely,
farther and farther into the distance. I will
think of them late at night, on a night like this
and I will wonder how far they have walked
and who’s neck they have found to touch.
–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
May 30th, 2009
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Review by Kristina Marie Darling
IT WAS A TERRIBLE CLOUD AT TWILIGHT
by Alessandra Lynch
LSU Press
Building 3005
8000 GSRI Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70820
ISBN 978-0-8071-3346-0
2008, 73pp., $16.95
www.lsu.edu/lsupress
In her second book of poems, It was a terrible cloud at twilight, Alessandra Lynch offers readers a complex understanding of childhood, in which misfortune and loss often prompt a premature transition to adulthood. Filled with barren landscapes and abandoned playgrounds, the works in this collection frequently reframe narratives like fairy tales from a mature perspective, suggesting that even the most innocent phases in one’s life can become riddled with tragedy. Eloquently conveyed through her pairing of the philosophical with the everyday, Lynch’s poetry raises fascinating questions about the place of grief in everyday life, “brooding” and “glittering” all the while.
Throughout the book, Lynch continually revisits the transition from youth to adulthood, in which she depicts a burgeoning consciousness of the possibility of loss. Frequently conveying this theme through imagery of the natural world, Lynch gracefully mirrors her speakers’ internal conflicts and realizations in descriptions of the landscapes that surround them. By situating disenchanted narrators in desolate fields and dim houses, the poems in this collection create fascinating tensions between interior and exterior, a theme that recurs as the book unfolds. These ideas are exemplified by a poem in the collection entitled “Nostalgia,” in which an adult speaker’s idealized vision of youth is conveyed through descriptions of her surroundings. Lynch writes, for example, in this poem:
May 29th, 2009
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Michael Miller
CORPORAL RUSSELL
There are no mirrors in his room.
Five surgeries have begun
To restore his shrapnelled face,
This map of grafted skin.
Once this face was handsome,
Was kissed by women, looked upon.
On Sunday you will find him here.
Let him say you are his friend.
He will close the blinds,
Turn off the light, and you
Can speak, you can listen to
His voice that has not changed.
–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
May 28th, 2009
Amy Miller
RHODE ISLAND
for my mother
That summer in Misquamicut, when boys
as ripe as roadside corn shot pool in darkened
eighteen-over bars, I found the joy
they buried deep in denim straight-front pockets—
pipe screens, joints, and all the damp and salty
wounded want my navigating hands
could plunder. Home and sunburned, bedroom walls
my gulag—no diary, no dolls—digging sand
and ashes from the trenches of my shoes,
I heard her laughing—late, in bed with Dad,
no malice in her voice, in love—a girl whose
moody boy came home for her with mad
martinis, seven jokes to sleep on, sleep
itself a garland he laid at her feet.
–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
May 27th, 2009
Joy Maulitz
IN THE GYNECOLOGIST’S WAITING ROOM
Good Housekeeping? No.
Parenting? Not me.
Women’s Sexual Health?
Now we’re talking.
Flipping through,
arrested by a close-up of an old woman,
way up close and personal,
right between her legs.
Two fingers pulled the lips back a bit:
hello and how do you do.
In another magazine it might’ve been
for the avid porno wanker
but here it was for science,
and hallelujah, I was edified.
Because aside from OB-GYNs
and the lucky old geezer or Sappho,
who among us has had the chance
to study a senior vagina?
I glanced around me, grabbed hold
with both hands, and stared.
I am here to report that it looked ship-shape:
pink and moist as a baby’s gums,
cunning, nifty, trim and tidy,
like the rig of a young file clerk downtown.
No off-color, no dewlaps flapping,
this was nine square inches that could rule the world.
I wanted to high-five this vagina’s woman,
say right on, mama, you’re lookin’ fine,
but the nurse was calling my name.
I pressed the shiny folds together,
slid the magazine back into its slot,
and stepped into my rosy future.
–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
