May 18th, 2012
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Devika Brandt
WHAT MY PARENTS WANT
At 86 Dad wants a new silver Mercury with heated seats.
Mom wants whatever Dad wants. We’re on the phone,
and I’m scrubbing the kitchen floor with my headset
on, scratching at the black sap marks that stick and
spread before finally letting go. We’re all tired of talking.
So I don’t ask them about moving closer to their kids;
I don’t mention the nurse they fired; I don’t say I think
they’re making a mistake. I breathe hard and tackle
a tough wad of sap. They tell me how cold it is in Las Vegas
in the winter; how the mountains turn purple in their rise
toward the sky. I don’t ask them if they’re eating. I keep
myself from mentioning their many medications. They
want me to love them; they want me to leave them alone.
They want to fumble along the walls of their stucco
house until one falls down, cheek to the cool tile
of the floor, bones so heavy, joints stiff, life blood
thick and unwilling. I hope the other one will lie down too,
pull an afghan over them, the one with squares her mother
made. I hope in the accumulating heat of the desert
they will gasp into each other’s arms and give themselves
away. I hope they can do it without breaking. I hope
they can do it in the clean sweet heat of the day, an open
mouthed entry, the last ripe fruits of breath released.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention
May 16th, 2012
L.L. Harper
ASSASSIN
All day we mock what
is beyond our touch
and at the end of the day
I drive thirty miles home
to sleep with a man
who doesn’t deserve
to live his life like a slave.
My children slake their own
thirsts hours away and I
watch videos of their childhood.
Outside, the pansies I have
yet to plant wither in October sun.
I am an American woman,
spoiled as last month’s gravy,
ripe as ground pork in a dumpster,
tethered by plenty,
undone by complacency
vivid as a severed hand.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
May 14th, 2012
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Rob Hardy
TO THE DAUGHTER I NEVER HAD
I saw you today at the playground.
You were wearing a little dress
that reminded me of all the dresses
I never bought for you,
all the sundresses and twirly skirts,
all the Hanna Anderssons.
You were on the swing, leaning back,
reaching up with your candy-striped legs,
as if to reinsert yourself
into an imaginary heaven,
into the realm of possibility.
You didn’t see me watching you
from a future in which you don’t exist,
but sometimes you smile at me
from the face of another man’s daughter—
a smile that contains all the mornings
we never baked bread together,
all the cartwheels you never turned,
all the stories you never told me
about all the things that never happened.
You are six, or nine, or fifteen, and always
as beautiful as I imagined, growing up
smart and graceful and strong, and I am glad,
and it breaks my heart
that you have become all this without me.
I have spent what would have been
your entire life breaking up
fights between the boys,
scrubbing the floor around the toilet,
trying to get them to change their underwear,
and knowing that I could not love anyone more—
not even you.
Perhaps someday you will understand
how it’s possible to regret
the life that never was, and still love nothing
more than the life that is.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
May 13th, 2012
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Jenny Hanning
KNOWN
We can talk about my failure until the cows come home
Meaning, Baby,
It’s a fact
—Like how the health teacher told us about body types
Some girls, she said, will just be heavy
They could diet till the cows come home and still be heifers—
And how she laughed at her own joke
And how the fat girls started to sweat with shame
And I was skinny in that made of sticks way
That comes with being young
And I was skinny, but there were other girls
Who wore their bones like corsets
And fat girls with pretty fat girl faces who would do anything
To feel pretty and not fat
So I laughed—I laughed along
—I let you down,
Did I?
Of course I did—
This is something that you could have read in the leaves
Tea leaves gathered at the bottom of the cup
Leaves gathered in the gutter
Or written in the saliva words
I tongued across your stomach, your thighs, your trusting back
You were shown a thing or two a long while ago
—Remember that day our health teacher
Said those ugly words
And I laughed—
I laughed like the girl I was
And that should have told you something
That right there, should have told you a lot
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
May 12th, 2012
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Gordon Grilz
REUNION
For Cheryl
For as long as I can remember
I’ve been an outsider
a stranger in my own heart
caught between the way it could have been
and the way it was.
You must have sensed me
thinking of you
in the birch trees on the mountain.
Or did you remember me
dreaming out your window
in the rain?
A hummingbird hovers
on the blossoms
of a giant saguaro
feasting on nectar.
You must have found me
thirsting in the desert
huddled under a paloverde.
Or did you hear me
weeping at the grave
beneath a cloudless sky?
When day becomes night
and we are held
in the twilight of not knowing
if it’s dusk or dawn
our dreams become real
in a half-lit room where
shadows chase each
other around the walls.
A pair of white-winged doves
build their nest on the chain link fence
that separates the prison
from the Sonoran Desert.
I hope you will find it better
to love a man
you cannot be with
than be with a man
you cannot love.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
