January 22, 2025

“The Afterlife” by Ron KoertgePosted by

Ron Koertge

THE AFTERLIFE

I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.
Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.
Love the game room and those herbal teas.
Everyone remembers Betty Grable.
 
Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.
Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased.
Everyone remembers Betty Grable.
Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.
 
Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased
tucked in among a thousand souvenirs.
Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.
Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.
 
Tucked in among a thousand souvenirs,
there’s room for clippings and my Betamax.
Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.
Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.
 
There’s room for clippings and my Betamax.
The past is present like a golden key.
Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.
I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Ron Koertge: “A while ago I read at a retirement center with some friends. Afterwards, someone mentioned the Faulkner quote: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ I wasn’t surprised when I got home, sat down and wrote the first draft of ‘The Afterlife.’”

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January 21, 2025

“Happiness” by John GoodePosted by

John Goode

HAPPINESS

He found it on the side of the road, blood
smeared across its fur like a strip of red flag.
And flies filled the air,
too many to count.
 
Back in the war, his wife used to make sense
of things like this
in long letters he held in his hands.
But she was gone
and the generals were gone too.
 
The sun was there with the flies
as it had been before,
and their metallic green bodies glowed
as they dove into the wreck, their tongues
like dreams their stomachs couldn’t wake.
 
The dog had been missing for days;
the man had no evidence
of its nostrils smoking like guns,
or its black pelt slick with the sweat
of a hunt.
 
He hadn’t seen the rabbit either,
skipping out over tall weeds,
four pounds of meat, hovering in the dog’s eyes
like happiness, but he knew
it had been there.
 

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

__________

John Goode: “I was standing in the back of a pick-up truck unloading lumber for a construction site. The sun was blazing down and I was reciting Lorca’s poem ‘The Old Lizard’ under my breath. I knew then I would have to leave town and write my own poems.”

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January 20, 2025

“They Sing” by Willie James KingPosted by

Willie James King

THEY SING

The cicadas get one day to sing, mate
having lived seventeen-years underground
as grubs, that’s a long time for heaven’s sake,
too little for light or to fool around.
 
Who cares if others hate them when they sing
because their song is not lovely to hear
as if they’d be pleased just to have a fling
with one shot at sex while death waits so near.
 
Guess their song, to some, is like rakes on rocks
given the time they get to gasp and breed.
In twenty-twenty-four there’re two flocks
competing; they do not need time to feed.
 
It’s a wonder they’d care to sing at all,
at the rate they rise then suddenly fall.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Willie James King: “Mary Oliver’s American Primitive became my first writing teacher. Reading her poems taught me that it was okay to write about the things that really moved, that I cared about. Once I was bitten by the bug, although it started decades ago, I haven’t tired of it since.”

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January 19, 2025

“Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” by Erin MurphyPosted by

Erin Murphy

INSOMNIA CHRONICLES XXVI

The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. Some of my friends are trying Dry January. Dryuary. Others are sober curious. There’s a mock cocktail called a Phony Negroni. It’s made with non-alcoholic gin. Phony Negroni. Phony baloney. When I was eight, my brother and I were walking by a house in our neighborhood when suddenly a slab of baloney sailed through the air and stuck to a chain link fence. There were no people or animals in sight. Such a funny word, baloney. What’s Biden’s favorite saying? Malarkey. So hokey. But then, even the word hokey is hokey. Monday we’ll inaugurate a felon the same day we celebrate Martin Luther King. Felonious Trump. For years we’d pass the brick rancher and say There’s the baloney house the way you might observe that it’s raining or snowing. We humans can normalize anything.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Erin Murphy: “The baloney house was a mid-century brick ranch that was nearly identical to my childhood home. I’ve wanted to write about it for years, and the upcoming inauguration finally gave me the opportunity.” (web)

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January 18, 2025

“I Only Dance for My Mother” by Mathias NelsonPosted by

Mathias Nelson

I ONLY DANCE FOR MY MOTHER

She gives me the wine
and I take the wine.
 
I mop her floors
and she walks on them
while they’re still wet
so I begin to dance
to warn her of how
easy one can slide.
 
She watches
grinning in her old green jacket
before going outside
to see the moon on the snow.
 

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

__________

Mathias Nelson: “When I was little I used to act like a monkey, holding my mother’s hand and doing chimp talk. Things have changed, but I still act like an idiot in attempt to make her smile when I can.Sometimes it works, and, well, other times … she calls me a stupid sonof- a-bitch.” (web)

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January 17, 2025

“Regrets” by Edmund JorgensenPosted by

Edmund Jorgensen

REGRETS

Regrets are pointless—
Which doesn’t mean
They don’t have an edge
That’s mortally keen—
 
That’ll halve your brain
And cleave your heart
And tease your days
And dreams apart—
 
Until at length
You play two roles,
Like water poured
To fill two holes—
 
And neither self
Quite stuffs your skin:
The almost-am
Or the might-have-been.
 

—from Rattle #86, Winter 2024

__________

Edmund Jorgensen: “I write poetry because order is a protest against despair.”

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January 16, 2025

“One Brother Said to the Other, ‘Let’s Go into the Fields'” by Philip LevinePosted by

Philip Levine

ONE BROTHER SAID TO THE OTHER, “LET’S GO INTO THE FIELDS.”

Beyond the old barn
a small stream ran all those winter days,
and beyond the stream almost nothing grew
except weeds, poke grass, burdock, scatterings
of hemp plants left from years back. If you
stood still and let the pale sunlight descend
around you and said nothing, you’d catch
the echo of human voices, but better not
to hear what was said. Better to walk
beyond the sagging fences and keep going
until there was no where to go, for the birds
circling above were not there for you.
In the low trees at the edge of the woods
you might find abandoned nests, their eggs
slashed open. Reach in and touch the twigs
bundled into a gray basket of hopes.
Now let your hand wander the crusted leaves
while the west wind, rising at last, brings
what we are here for: the same blood smell.
 

—from Rattle #10, Winter 1998

__________

Philip Levine: “I’d like to be remembered as a good teacher and a good father and a good poet and a good husband and a good brother. There are a lot of things I’d like to be remembered for, come to think of it. But I suppose chief among them would be as a good poet, or somebody who advanced American poetry or somebody who took it into areas where it hadn’t been.”

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