August 18, 2021

Elaine Fowler Palencia

CAPITALISM

Along the two-lane blacktops
of my childhood we stopped
to buy watermelons.
Mother thumped them,
listening for that deep, ripe sound. 
If she hesitated, the farmer
would take out his clasp knife,
cut a square plug for tasting,
offer it on the point of his knife.
She always bought the melon
he’d spoiled for us.

Later, a high school friend
who sold Bibles door-to-door
for spending money, said
he was sent out with these instructions:
“Don’t show them an unwrapped Bible.
Hold up one wrapped in cellophane
and then rip that off.
It obligates them to buy.
They feel like they have no choice.
This works especially well
with the poor.”

from Rattle #72, Summer 2021
Tribute to Appalachian Poets

__________

Elaine Fowler Palencia: “I grew up in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, the descendant of Appalachian farmers and teachers on both sides. Much of my writing draws on that background. I owe my sense of place, scale, and identity to Appalachia.” (web)

Rattle Logo

June 16, 2021

Appalachian Poets

Conversation with
Kari Gunter-Seymour

Rattle #71 cover, colorful painting of a spiral eye with birds swirling around it
The Summer 2021 issue features a tribute to Appalachian Poets. More than 25 million people call Appalachia home, and it’s a region known for its storytelling. The 22 poets in this special section prove that to be the case, writing about family, history, and modern life. The tribute section was so good, we had to stretch the issue to 124 pages to fit it all in.

In the open section, the poems are as strong as ever, featuring reader favorites Francesca Bell and Ted Kooser, along with a number of excellent poets new to Rattle’s pages, writing about everything from sexual desire to cancer, big foot to peeing in the pool, including a long poem from Clemonce Heard on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.

Appalachian Poets

Audio Available Roy Bentley The Death of the Box Turtle
Audio Available Ace Boggess Goodbye for Now
Audio Available Hannah Bonner And When He Told Her It Was Truly …
Audio Available Trent Busch What Used to Be There
Audio Available Andrew Lee Butler Letter to Nordstrom …
Audio Available Susan Comninos Imagining Abraham
Lewis Crawford Sometimes the Dream Comes Back to Me
Audio Available Prairie Moon Dalton Grandmother
Audio Available Marissa Davis Katabasis
donnarkevic 23 Miners Dead at Century Mine
Audio Available Mitzi Dorton On Strike for My Union Daddy …
Amanda Gaines There Are Other Things I’d Like to Explain
Audio Available Kari Gunter-Seymour The Whole Shebang Up for Debate
Raymond Hammond Lizard Tongues
Audio Available Edison Jennings Cold Spring Morning and the Grade School
Audio Available Sean Kelbley Pipeline Surveyors
Jeff Daniel Marion Smoke
Audio Available Robert Morgan Mandolin
Elaine Fowler Palencia Capitalism
Matthew S. Parsons The Whole Kit
The Whole Kit II
Audio Available Sarah St. Vincent Grown
Audio Available Sarah Wheeler The Wild
..

Open Poetry

Francesca Bell What Small Sound
Audio Available Frank Beltrano Segments of Memory
Audio Available Susan Browne Strawberry
Audio Available Wyn Cooper Smoke
Audio Available Bill Glose Second Opinion
Sasquatch
Joseph Goldstein To Sarah
Seduction
Clemonce Heard Ninety-Nine
Ted Kooser Cancer
Under a Forty-Watt Bulb
Danusha Laméris Appointment
Audio Available Lance Larsen Urine Poem
Samantha Leon Mapping Desire
Alison Luterman Insatiable
Audio Available Emily Portillo Eleven
Audio Available Jack Ridl On Finding a Wren Below Our Bedroom Window
Audio Available Rebecca Starks Paper Birches in Snow
Audio Available Iheoma Uzomba Panorama of a Coloured Race
Ben Wenzl About Work the Dancefloor
..

Conversation

Kari Gunter-Seymour (web)
..

Cover Art

Margo Lemieux