August 19th, 2010
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John Yohe
THE GHOST OF FRANK O’HARA
The ghost of Frank O’Hara taps me on
the shoulder whispering
and what about
the humor what about talks with the sun
and things that happen at the movies out
of sight of parents don’t forget the thirst
of being in Manhattan in the heat
and Coke the drink
remember too your first
love passion music though it might not come out
in words it’s there in you but I was sad
and said what good is humor in a poem
when people die Manhattan Fire Island
we
bought falafels which we thought weren’t bad
and walked to Central Park for space and some
children were laughing and he said ask them
–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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August 17th, 2010
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Donald Mace Williams
THE VENTURI EFFECT
You may have thought, from visiting art shows,
that canyons squeezed together on their way
downstream. No. That’s only perspective. They
in fact, as any hiker my age knows,
spread out and vanish. Their canyonness goes.
Their vital currents pool up, slacken, splay,
their tall red hoodoos melt into flat gray,
the bankside cottonwoods go, nothing grows.
This one the same. Far downstream now, my feet
have brought me where I see the end. No foam
from water straitened, focused one last time
by rock walls aping art, trying to meet,
but alkali-white flatlands, killdeers’ home,
walls gone, speed gone, all low that was high prime.
–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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August 14th, 2010
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Thom Ward
RUMPUS, COHESION, MESS
The bed sheet knows the vices I’ve slept.
How quickly it nooses my feet. Someone said,
we’re wrong men in a right world, all that
zigzag anger. Not quite—that’s another movie.
We’re wrong men who’ve built a wrong world,
each with a knapsack full of crushed glass,
cigarette butts. Photos of our children march
off the walls to a music only the dog can hear.
Rumpus minus cohesion equals mess. So many
weapons, I’m waiting for the plunger to make
the first move. Why should the water play fair.
Is that a cross around your neck or the last bird?
Things forgotten scream out for help in dreams
but not as loudly as things remembered.
–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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August 12th, 2010
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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
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August 9th, 2010
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Catherine Esposito Prescott
TO A HURRICANE
At the right speed wind sounds like a train
straining its breaks as metal grates metal;
but before you imagine sparks raining
circles around the wheels, its voice changes
to a throaty hush. In the early stages, you may
mistake it for the neighbors laughing, then crying.
As doors and windows tremble, as locks labor
to stay closed, you’ll hear the cry of the mother
burying her child by the river, and of widows
who have lost everything to war. And in that moment
what remains of your sense of order is supplicant
like the spine of a palm tree bowed toward earth, fronds beaten, torn,
and the sweet cord of belief that holds your life together
fights like hell not to snap: the tree’s trunk, your back.
–from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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