DEATH UNTOUCHED, DEATH CROONING
—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

DEATH UNTOUCHED, DEATH CROONING
—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
THE “B” LIST
Prompt: “A Two Sylvias Press prompt, entitled, ‘Make a list, baby!’”
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems__________
Frank Beltrano: “Over the past couple of years I have probably written over 200 poems to prompts. I particularly love Peter Murphy prompts and prompts written by Two Sylvias Press. It’s not because I have a shortage of imagination or inspiration. I find that a prompt gives focus, and the more demanding the prompt the more rewarding the result. Also I imagine the writer of the prompt is listening, wants their curiosity answered, and becomes the person to whom the poem is written.”
Image: “Seamstress” by Lily Prigioniero. “My Wife, Sewing at a Window” was written by Eithne Longstaff for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
__________
MY WIFE, SEWING AT A WINDOW
—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2023, Artist’s Choice
__________
Comment from the artist, Lily Prigioniero: “Although the seamstress in my painting is my mom, I related to this poem in many ways, especially regarding the passage of time, a major factor in choosing this one among many. The images at the beginning are vivid and easily approachable in their present-tense setting; then there’s the transition into a past memory with the simile, ‘Time stretches like / the elastic she holds / and I recall a trip / to Rome …’ We are then brought back to the present by tying the Caravaggio experience of light to ‘Now she is the old / master ….’ This time around, however, the passage of time feels heavier and more mysterious, not only because the rose fabric is ‘stippled with thorns,’ but because we are given a glimpse into the future with the poem’s powerful last line ‘and dare not look / to the room’s dark corners.'”
POET’S GUIDE TO HOME REPAIRS
The key to the car is inside an electronic device called a fob
Don’t worry if it’s your first time hearing that term and you’re over 40 with an MFA!
It doesn’t matter that it’s called a fob; it’s too hard to open anyway and I’ll need to run onto the baseball field to ask the kid’s PE teacher to pry it with my hair barrette
which will set off the Subaru alarm sending an email to my husband that the car’s had a break-in.
Press the Start / Engine button to dismantle the alarm then watch
YouTube videos of men taking apart the fob to replace the lithium battery.
Press Pause and Play as many times as it takes you to do what they did.
This isn’t my gift—
I am a poet married to a rabbi and when a light burns out we adjust to less light.
For years it’s been me—the woman with everyone’s keys, letting in the guy who vents the dryers, the guy who patches the roof, the guy who puts spikes out to deter pigeons, the guy to fix the leaky dishwasher, the basement boiler—all the guys with billable hours.
Because for so many years people thought that I did nothing while raising my kids I had to learn how to do everything
Even return the cable box—and returning the cable box is annoying.
Sherrie didn’t do it when she decided to leave this earth; she just left a diagram of how to find it in her note.
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
__________
Alana Joblin Ain: “I write poetry and prose, but find that I can traverse time and space most easily in verse, and surprise myself by where I end up—in this case beginning with the chaos of being locked out of my car (and unable to change the dead key battery) with my kids on a sports field in my 40s bringing me to a set of mundane instructions: an image from Sherrie’s suicide note, to myself at age 15, on a first date in a snowstorm, very late to return to my young aunt’s home—decades of life still ahead of her.” (web)
RARE ARCHITECTURE
—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010
__________
Matthew Olzmann: “I was writer-in-residence at a high school in Detroit. As is true at pretty much any high school, the kids felt—seemingly at all times—this incredible pressure to fit in, to be like the rest of their peers. Often this meant hiding, denying or simply not talking about the things that made them unique and interesting (being the smartest one in the class, being an accomplished ballet dancer, having a collection of antique table cloths, etc.). That’s where ‘Rare Architecture’ begins and ends—the urge to blend in with the rest of the neighborhood.” (web)
THE PREAKNESS
—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008
__________
John Colasacco: “I want to thank my teachers Michael and Chris for helping me with this poem. It started as an exercise; I was basically listing as many distant memories as I could, especially memories that seemed mostly visual. While I was making the list I became aware of a frustration I have with my memory, and with list-making. After that the poem’s movement started to jive more closely with my frustration, and it seemed to become its own thing.”
CONVICT GAME
—from Poets Respond
September 17, 2023
__________
Alejandro Escudé: “It’s difficult to say what prompted this poem. I think it was a gross and immoral miscalculation to take a group photo with this escaped convict. I think it made me ponder about the phenomenon of group photos in general. How there’s usually an ulterior motive for the photo and for the subsequent posting of that photo.” (web)