March 1st, 2012
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Laurelyn Whitt
BUNAHAN
When the last speaker of Boro
falls silent,
who will notice
the first-grown feather
of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi)
or feel how far pretending
to love (onsay) is
from loving
for the last time (onsra)?
Quiet and uneasy, in an
unfamiliar place (asusu)
no one sees her, or listens;
there is less of her
than there was.
The last speaker feels
Boro’s world fall apart,
knowledge unravels:
healing plants go
unseen; the bodies of animals
are unreadable.
With a last thought, onguboy
(to love it all, from the heart),
she leaves fragments
of the world she held in place.
We touch their husks,
about to speak and
about not to speak
(bunhan, bunahan);
awash in loss,
incomplete.
Note:
The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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February 29th, 2012
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Lesley Wheeler
RIMWALKERS
Someone licked the fur on the dying baby
rabbit into whorls. Its white belly fuzz is stained
with darkening red. My children kneel in the grass,
puzzling over what to do. We drizzle
water into its mouth and it scrabbles to life,
lip fluttering like an infant’s—it wants to nurse.
As we lift the handful into a shoebox, we startle
at hearing a high-pitched complaint and spot
two tiny incisors in the rose-brown cup
of its jaw. When it dies it seems to weigh much less,
emptied of desire. Its eye shocked wide.
This is the most dangerous corner in town,
she says. My daughter goes to church with the chief
of police, and he says so. Why, just last week
I crossed here, and a red pick-up truck, it flew
around the corner and clipped the tip
of my cane. The old woman caught on me as I walked
by, like a dandelion spore. Stuck,
like the chorus of a sad song, like melted gum.
I carry her on my back all day. Her hair
brushes my cheek as she whispers for hours about
rubber-tipped wobble-voiced old person things.
Both of them haunt the edges of the main
road, where the traffic is so loud you can hardly
hear them. You have to be small and light to live
on the rim. You have to focus on just one hunger.
A grassy stream of milk in the dark. A stranger
who can be shamed, briefly, into slowing down.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
February 24th, 2012
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–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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February 22nd, 2012
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Terry Spohn
SHELF LIFE
And I asked myself about the
present: how wide it was, how deep
it was, how much was mine to keep.
—Kurt Vonnegut
I was making a movie in a suburb
in a grocery store in a housewife’s dream
I was holding a cardboard megaphone and a clipboard
somewhere an empty chair was waiting
the housewife had known me once
long ago, better than I had known myself
she pushed her cart down the condiment aisle
one front wheel fidgeting
like an idiot prince at his birthday party
on the tasting table Barwell’s Pickled Beets
the color of Grandfather’s lung
sat untouched in their delicate paper cups
the housewife kept a list
clenched tightly in her fist
if it fell and unrolled
it could reach all the way into her next marriage
the canned vegetable aisle was veined
with cables and heavy plugs wrapped in black tape
like the ground at church carnivals
this was as close as the woman
had been to me in years
she moved up and down the narrowing aisles
while the cart filled up with children
I could almost touch her in her sleep
could almost wake her
I had memorized the script
that could almost free her
but I was busy changing it
the movie would run backwards, all right
all the children disappearing
creamed corn bursting from cans
and flowing back through factories
and into the sun, and we would all soon begin
to forget, as we came out of the theater
squinting in the startling daylight
who, exactly, we had come here with
and which of these bright, new cars was ours
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
February 19th, 2012
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Carrie Shipers
APOLOGY FOR BEING SMALL
I’m sorry I have to touch dirt, grease, just-rolled
noodles drying on the counter. Snot, scabs,
broken birdshells, you with my grimy fingers.
For when we’re in the store and words burn
my chest and crawl in my throat like throw-up
but only screams come out. The kicking is extra
and feels good after looking at bread and tomatoes
when I know there are cookies and toys
you should let me have. The lies that aren’t
very good—about chocolate and wetting the bed—
I know you won’t believe, so I don’t think they count.
The ones about the dog who knows my name
and wants to live with me and my invisible friend
who can fly—those aren’t lies, they’re stories.
I’m sorry I ask so many questions, especially
the same ones over and over. For hiding dirty underwear,
candy, myself inside my treehouse to see how long
you’ll look. I’m sorry for breaking my toys,
the vase you told me not to touch, your skin
with my teeth. I’m sorry my legs aren’t longer, sorry
I can’t keep up, that I have to try so hard to Be good,
Be quiet, Straighten up and behave. I’m sorry
I cry because I’m scared, hungry, tired, mad.
Because I’m small. Because you don’t remember
what that’s like and I’m afraid that I’ll forget.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
