July 24, 2019
benjamin_aleshire Wept with a customer, clutching each other in the street while no one understood what was happening between us. She’s in love with a 62-year-old man, and even tho he’s so much older his muscles are tight from all the work he does and it turns her on. But at first he kept saying, Hey, I’m just using you. Like he was pushing her away. They fell in love anyway, and he finally told her the truth: leukemia, maybe a few years left—the doctors are helpless, there’s nothing for them to even cut out. So in a letter she joked with him that living too long is bad manners, anyway. Now I feel empty and full at the same time. But you can’t carry this around with you and be as lonely as I am; I had to exorcise it with a ritual of words to wash it away, and then a whiskey in Vesuvio that tasted like water or somehow, sand. I bought a white rose from the bum sucking his gums at the other end of the bar and didn’t even know why—gave it away to Tony across the street at Specs who looked at me all strange. City Lights again today, it’s not like I have a choice. #poetry #poem #poetforhire
—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019
Tribute to Instagram Poets
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Benjamin Aleshire: “I make my living by traveling around the world and writing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter in the street. I post on Instagram to let people know where I’ll be setting up, and also as a way of sharing some of the stories behind the poems in the caption, the reasons why strangers wanted what they wanted—which I see as an opportunity for flash-prose, and also a method of exorcising people’s stories, so I don’t have to walk around with their pain clanging around in my skull.” (web)
Quincy R. Lehr is an American poet who was raised in Norman, Oklahoma, and presently lives in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in print and online venues in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, and the Czech Republic, including American Arts Quarterly, Cadenza, The Chimaera, and The Raintown Review. His first book of poetry, Across the Grid of Streets, was published by Seven Towers (Dublin) in 2008, and his second, Obscure Classics of English Progressive Rock, also by Seven Towers in 2011. His book-length poem Heimat is now available from Barefoot Muse Press. He is also the editor of The Raintown Review. His poem “
Timothy Green has worked as editor of Rattle since 2004. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Connecticut Review, The Florida Review, Mid-American Review, and Nimrod International Journal. Green has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and his first book, American Fractal (Red Hen Press, 2009), won the Phi Kappa Phi award from the University of Southern California. He is a contributing columnist for the (Riverside) Press Enterprise and co-founder of the Wrightwood Literary Festival. He lives in Wrightwood with his wife and two children.
Benjamin Aleshire is based in New Orleans and travels the world as a poet-for-hire, composing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter. His work has been featured in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, El Mundo, London Magazine, and on television in the U.S., China, and Spain. The second edition of his artist-book of visual poems, Currency, was released in 2017. An excerpt of his novel, Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour is forthcoming in LitHub. Ben serves as assistant poetry editor for the Green Mountains Review. His poem “Good Manners” appears in Rattle #64. For more information, visit 
Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and Other Heart Stab Poems (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife (2018). Her chapbook, The Dead Kid Poems, debuted in May 2019. She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Slipstream, Plume, Nashville Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Diode, Glass, and elsewhere. Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. Her poems appear in Rattle #41, #52, and #61. For more information, visit 
Maria Jastrzebska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and came to the U.K as a child. She was co-editor of Queer in Brighton (New Writing South 2014) and has translated the work of Polish poet Justyna Bargielska with The Great Plan B (Smokestack 2017). Her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally in 2011. Her work is widely anthologized and features in the British Library project Between Two Worlds—Poetry and Translation. For the last six months she has been working on Snow Q, a collaborative project funded by Arts Council England: 
Pavana Reddy is a Los Angeles-based poet and songwriter. She is most well-known for her first book of poetry, Rangoli, as well a song called “Remain the Sea” written for the critically acclaimed album Land of Gold by Anoushka Shankar. She is currently set to release her second book of poems, Where Do You Go Alone, and is already working on her third. She was interviewed for and has two poems in Rattle #64. For more information, visit 
The Summer 2019 issue features a tribute to Instagram Poets. 
