February 26, 2024

Jacob K. Robinson

THE POOL

Oh, right. About the boy from the sky
He fell, unexpectedly, feet first into the pool
Which is a silly thing to think
A boy with enough composure, while falling from a great height, to direct his feet earthward
I suppose it could mean he intended to land
To bend his knees on arrival
To cushion the impact
But could it also mean he was trying to create as little splash as possible?
To pencil his body through the earth, like water
To show his skill at making no waves, causing no tumult, no hubbub, no trauma
Maybe he was competing in a diving contest
Between four other boys and himself
And he simply wanted to win.
 
The other boys had competed finely
There were flips and jackknifes and a cannonball just to stir the pot
They had no judge but themselves, each other
A scale of zero to ten, though no one would give a zero
That would simply be too cruel
And a ten was out of the question
A score only given to the impossible, the unattainable
A target to aim for, knowing they could never hit it.
 
With each dive they had raised the stakes
They had upped the ante, so to speak
This didn’t imply that the following dive need be better
Just that it had to be more, different, else
The thinking was that one must never step back, regress, devalue the competition
One must always add add add
Lift the competition to new heights
And in so doing, lift each other
It was really about encouragement, was it not?
It was really about making each other better, stronger, more capable
It was really about tough love and hard won battle scars
It was really about elevation.
 
From way up in the sky, the pool looked like a target, an eye
It had lost its kidney bean shape
And morphed into a simple dot
A little crystalline blue pupil with an off-white iris made of concrete and pebbles
Surrounding that, a green green green sclera
That was the wide open land of rural Texas
That was the cow pastures and hay fields
Hay fields in the off season, wild grass spurting up from the untilled dirt
There was a house next to the eye, a long ranch home
One could imagine it as a nose but that was upsetting
Then one might expect there to be another eye, bookending the bridge of the nose-house
But there wasn’t.
There isn’t.
There couldn’t be.
And it would be a sad thing to think about a missing eye, a semi-lost vision
So the nose-house does not exist, it disappears from view at this height
Not by actuality but by actualization
This was not an eye of a pair of eyes
This was a kind of cyclops, a singular point from which the Up Above is viewed
The Up Above in which a boy could be seen
Falling, feet first, toward the target-eye.
 
The other boys continued their competition
The highest score to be achieved thus far, an 8
Which is to say, they were nearing the end.
The dive that had achieved the 8 was a half back flip twist maneuver
Hard to render completely, but that is the description the attempting boy used
A sort of half back flip twist, then, head first, arms in front, straight down like a needle
And he did it
He pierced the water with hardly a ripple, comparatively anyhow
In fact, the only reason he did not merit a 9 was that he had not made the full twist
His entry was achieved at—roughly—a 350-degree position from how he began
Which was with his back to the other boys
So, given the parameters of the dive he described, he should have entered the water facing away again
And he nearly did
But not quite
Thus, the 8.
 
From below, the feet of the boy from the sky looked like an equal sign
Spread just slightly apart, the smallest of gaps between them
He had considered keeping them pressed tight to one another
Ankle to ankle, as it were
But that had proved to be uncomfortable to hold
And he would be holding it for some time
So instead he opted for the more sustainable: slightly apart.
There was something to this strange stance he had positioned himself in
This kind of gentle at-ease
Say one was flying in an airplane and looked out the window and saw the boy
He would look like he was standing on air
What a sight.
 
The diving boys did not know about the boy from the sky until he was there
They knew him, of course
He was a friend of theirs
Or an acquaintance maybe
But they didn’t know that word then
So they used friend
They didn’t know he was taking part in their little competition
They didn’t know how badly he wanted to win
They didn’t know how long he had been planning this dive
All they knew was that he was suddenly there
Crashing
Feet first
Into their pool.
 
The water, that blue pupil, spilled out onto the iris of off-white concrete and pebble
All of it
The pupil space that remained became the color of bleached bone, empty
Its blue trickled away away away
Over the concrete and pebble
toward the green green green sclera
And then it seeped down into it
And was gone
The boy from the sky was the new vision
The diving boys were seeing.
 
Cracks began
To form
In the pupil
As if the boy from the sky
Kept wanting
To go down
 
It was aging
Everything was aging
At a pace
Unexpected
Drying out
Unused
 
The green green green
Is now brown brown brown
And the nose-house that never was
Is being sold
The memories contained in the pupil waters
Now somewhere else
Scattered on impact
 
The pool
Will be demolished
Filled in
And maybe become a garden
Or a garage
 
The four diving boys
Will eventually forget the boy from the sky
Or no
Not forget
Simply not remember
Not every day anyway
But occasionally they will recall
The dive that was an 8
They will laugh about how close it was to a 9
And
Then
Oh right.
 

from Rattle #82, Winter 2023
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Jacob K. Robinson: “At the end of the day, I think I’d like to be summed up like so: I am Texan by birth, a Georgian by blood, and a New Yorker by choice. I like a good pair of Levi’s, mowing the lawn, and playoff baseball. I am doing my best.” (web)

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October 29, 2020

Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

Painting women lounging and swimming in a pool in the head of a bluish figure

Image: “Pool Head” by Pat Singer. “In the Dream-Pool” was written by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

IN THE DREAM-POOL

All summer long,
the pool was closed,
and I swam
continents,
asleep.

Glimpses of aqua
through a fence.

A neighbor’s
swimsuit.

Mouthwash blue.

The thing with dream-pools is
you never get to swim.

The thing with dream-pools is
they all mean something else.

When summer ended, the need passed
like an old pet, drifting
somewhere, like the wildfire smoke, or souls.

I thought of towels I’d sewed my name on,
how they one time seemed important.

In a dream-pool, I am floating,
silent blue in sheets around me.

In a dream-pool I am safe,
cleansed of whatever

came in with me,
my skin tight.

from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2020, Editor’s Choice

__________

Comment from the Editor, Timothy Green: “Interestingly, both this poem and the artist’s choice throb with the losses of the pandemic while looking through a fence that isn’t in the painting. In this case, the closing of the summer pool becomes a kind of obsession, haunting in its absence, as so many things are. There are so many memorable lines here: ‘The thing with dream-pools is / you never get to swim.’ That will stick with me.”

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December 12, 2014

Britt Luttrell

TOPLESS SWIMMING POOL

For god so loved the world he traced it, and traced it,
until the outside lines became dark.

He wrote the hearts of young boys
into the margins of a topless swimming pool,
then asked them not to look.

Bubbling up from god’s wrist—a cupped hand
full of spring water, lifting weightless breasts
to the lips of these women.

These women who do seem happier with their bodies,
as if floating on a moon with no men. No need
for support. I’ve spoken with friends

who are women and no one is mad at us directly.
More at privilege. I keep my neck still
as one of the boys in my care

has just seen his first pair of breasts go diving off the board.
I tell him that women can have their tops off
anywhere men can in this city.

He says that seems more fair. I envy his long life, full of
worsening. I try to shield my eyes, but they are widening,
starting to get pointy in the middle.

I turn my head to the line at Tube Rentals, where topless women
are being gawked at by boys like me, boys like me are offering
to hold their inflatables, saying how awful it must be

having boys like me gawk at them constantly. All the boys
are like me, with places inside they can’t reach.
I watch the young ones strap on their goggles—some 

have never even cut their hair. They dive to the bottom
of the springs, then come up screaming that they’ve touched it.

from Rattle #44, Summer 2014

__________

Britt Luttrell: “I teach nature in a place where most of the nature is dead, or else buried deep underground. A lot of my job is leading hikes, pointing out pockets of life where they exist. I think I do the same with my poems. I look for beauty hanging on and show it to whomever comes with me.” (website)

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October 22, 2020

Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

Painting women lounging and swimming in a pool in the head of a bluish figure

Image: “Pool Head” by Pat Singer. “Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park, Florida” was written by Vivian Shipley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Vivian Shipley

VISITING THE GARDENS AT DEPUGH NURSING CENTER, WINTER PARK, FLORIDA

As if I am in a zoo, I peer through
bars of the black iron fence.
Restricted by the coronavirus
to outdoor visits, I’m unable
to touch my sister parked
in her wheelchair by the aide.
Under a trellis, vines seem
to yearn as I do to touch her hair.
Azure blue flowers, centered
in purple, rest near her face,
eyes closed, lips flatlining.
I whisper Mary Oliver’s lines,

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.

Someone has smeared on fire engine
red lipstick as if my sister might flirt
again, arm on a jukebox, index finger
running down a man’s tie.

Like a live beetle savaged
by fire ants swarming its cranium,
a brain tumor eats from inside out
until Mary Alice, who cannot
escape her executioner, will die.

I know the tumor in her skull is like
an ember, burning until any memory
of me in her lobes has been turned
to white ash. But if I could remove
the top of her head like the surgeon
had done to debulk the tumor, I’d like
to believe I’d find our pool in Kentucky
with us, the three sisters in tank suits.
Mary is floating on her back in yellow.
I sit on the edge in blue daring only
to dangle my feet in the water.
My youngest sister, naturally in red,
dives from the high board.

As a child, Mary Alice was the good girl,
Pointed her toes in ballet class, strung
glass beads on elastic bracelets in Methodist
church camp to help others find salvation:
white, the purity of Mary, red, the blood
Jesus shed, even for me. To give me faith,
she explained good and evil are like sun
and rain. God sends rainbows to make
sense of them together. I’d shoot back,
I didn’t need the world to have meaning,
had no ache to be saved or have afterlife.
Now, to be with her again, I do.

from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2020, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Pat Singer: “The way this poem unfolds feels very real and unexpected. I enjoy the surprising and unpredictable way that the sister’s tumor introduces the visual of the pool inside the mind. The writer captured the grim, desolate reality of visiting someone who is unable to care for themselves anymore. Visiting someone who’s a husk of what they once were is difficult, sobering, and emotional. The words the writer uses conveys these feelings with raw power and an authentic voice. The visual cues tie in well with the art literally, but also manages to expand the meaningfulness into something much more robust and with more depth than what is on the surf.”

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August 31, 2014

Art Inspiring Poetry

There’s a long tradition of poetry responding to visual art (and vice versa), and we thought it would be fun to post a challenge. For the first, Judy Keown, cover artist from issue #45, donated a photograph of an argiope spider. We gave poets a month to respond to this photograph in verse, and received 266 entries. Judy Keown and Rattle’s Timothy Green each selected their favorite poem from the submissions and published them online at Rattle.com.

Given how many people seemed to enjoy the Ekphrastic Challenge, we’ve decided to make it a monthly series, using open submissions of artwork when necessary. Visual artists who would like to participate can submit work now through the end of December, by going here.

If you’re a poet, come back to this page every month to find a new piece of art to inspire your poetry. You’ll have one month to write and submit your poems. Each month, two winners—one chosen by the artist and the other by Rattle’s editor—will receive online publication and $100 each.

For the month of February, our image is the piece below by Walter Arnold. Find more of the artist’s work on his website, but only write your poems about the image below.

Submission Deadline:
February 28th


submit

__________

Previous Winners

 

December 2024 – James Valvis’s “Self-Portrait as a Prep School Llama”

Artist’s Choice:
The Grass Ceiling
Kevin West

Editor’s Choice:
The Boardroom at the Edge of the Field
Caiti Quatmann

 

November 2024 – Morgan Reed’s “Paradigm Shift”

Artist’s Choice:
My New Dress
Sarah Carleton

Editor’s Choice:
After Rain
Michael Pfeifer

 

October 2024 – Jennifer S. Lange’s “Zaubererturm”

Artist’s Choice:
In the Clearing
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
The Scene Is Set
Rose Lennard

 

September 2024 – Barbara Gordon’s “Have you ever eaten breakfast here before?”

Artist’s Choice:
Tanka [construction cones]
Cindy Guentherman

Editor’s Choice:
Reverie Work Ahead
Zeid

 

August 2024 – Tammy Nara’s “Forage”

Artist’s Choice:
Brushscape
Samuel Ertelt

Editor’s Choice:
August Thistle
Sonya Schneider

 

July 2024 – Faizan Adil’s “Lahore”

Series Editor’s Choice:
Song of a Masjid’s Floor
Ammara Younas

Editor’s Choice:
Haiku
Almila Dükel

 

June 2024 – Kim Beckham’s “Terry’s Keys”

Artist’s Choice:
Bigger Than Us
Emily Walker

Editor’s Choice:
What You Thought You Lost
Wendy Videlock

 

May 2024 – Barbara Hageman Sarvis’s “Bird Ascending the Fire”

Artist’s Choice:
Wildfire Dreams
Linda Vandlac Smith

Editor’s Choice:
An Early Autumn Light That Unburies You
Steven Pan

 

April 2024 – Gerrie Paino’s “Night Train”

Artist’s Choice:
Of California, the Wild
Breonne Stiglitz

Editor’s Choice:
Tracks
Matthew Murrey

 

March 2024 – John Paul Caponigro’s “Alignment II”

Artist’s Choice:
The Space Between
Amelie Flagler

Editor’s Choice:
Synapses and Stardust
Brandy Norrbom

 

February 2024 – Christine Crockett’s “Graphing Uncertainty V”

Artist’s Choice:
Things That Collapse
Jonathan Harris

Editor’s Choice:
Shoulder MRI
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

 

January 2024 – G.J. Gillespie’s “Desperado”

Artist’s Choice:
Emergence
Chris Kaiser

Editor’s Choice:
Portrait of My Father as the Count of Monte Cristo
Joanna Preston

 

December 2023 – Jeanne Wilkinson’s “Cold Sun”

Artist’s Choice:
Curriculum Vitae
Dante Di Stefano

Editor’s Choice:
Watch This!
Tristan Roth

 

November 2023 – Scott Wiggerman’s “Aerial II”

Artist’s Choice:
Flying Back to England That First Time
Rose Lennard

Editor’s Choice:
(Sub)Division
Christine Crockett

 

October 2023 – Arthur Lawrence’s “Shadowland”

Artist’s Choice:
The Addiction Bird
Agnes Hanying Ong

Editor’s Choice:
Pilgrims of the Mound
Conal Abatangelo

 

September 2023 – Carla Paton’s “Yellow Flowers”

Artist’s Choice:
For a Robot
Alison Bailey

Editor’s Choice:
The Rote Stuff
Gary Glauber

 

August 2023 – Lily Prigioniero’s “Seamstress”

Artist’s Choice:
My Wife, Sewing at a Window
Eithne Longstaff

Editor’s Choice:
To the Child Watching His Grandmother Sew
Bradford Kimball

 

July 2023 – Elizabeth Hlookoff’s “Here I Go”

Artist’s Choice:
Fighting the Wind
Teresa Breeden

Editor’s Choice:
Aphorisms Thrown into the Eye of the Blizzard
Tamara Raidt

 

June 2023 – Judith Fox’s “Untold Stories”

Artist’s Choice:
Girl Is Glued to Door
William Ross

Editor’s Choice:
Image of a Woman Along a Sidewalk
Jason Brunner

 

May 2023 – Carmella Dolmer’s “A Lonesome Border”

Editor’s Choice:
What the Astrologer Failed to See in Our Stars
Dick Westheimer

Associate Editor’s Choice:
You Don’t Have to Choose
Beth Copeland

 

April 2023 – Lou Storey’s “All of Us”

Artist’s Choice:
Sestina
Amanda Quaid

Editor’s Choice:
The World Beneath
Devon Balwit

 

March 2023 – G.G. Silverman’s “Lighthouse at the Edge of the World”

Artist’s Choice:
I Asked the Chatbot to Write about a Lighthouse, but It Generated Lies
Pamela Lucinda Moss

Editor’s Choice:
Selah
Kristene Kaye Brown

 

February 2023 – JoAnne Tucker’s “The Kitchen Goddess”

Artist’s Choice:
The Rebirth of Venus
Luisa Giulianetti

Editor’s Choice:
Joy
Melissa Madenski

 

January 2023 – Susan MacMurdy’s “Dream House, Later”

Artist’s Choice:
Devotion
Brianna Locke

Editor’s Choice:
Cut Out
Sandra Nelson

 

December 2022 – J. Stormer’s “Unsatisfied Externals”

Artist’s Choice:
The Room as We See It
Andrew Payton

Editor’s Choice:
Resolution of Memory
Sara Dallmayr

 

November 2022 – Joshua Eric Williams’ “Humid”

Artist’s Choice:
Old Testament Family Tree
Kid Kassidy

Editor’s Choice:
In a Moment
J. A. Lagana

 

October 2022 – René Bohnen’s “Ballet Above the Bay”

Artist’s Choice:
Fault Lines
Margaret Malochleb

Editor’s Choice:
Wingspan
Christopher Shipman

 

September 2022 – Bonnie Riedinger’s “Take Heart”

Artist’s Choice:
Morning Glory
Dion O’Reilly

Editor’s Choice:
Fibers
Ashley Caspermeyer

 

August 2022 – Enne Tess’s “Worm”

Artist’s Choice:
Identity Politics
Drea

Editor’s Choice:
Haute Buttons
Kenton K. Yee

 

July 2022 – Jaundré van Breda’s “Blueprint of a Dream”

Artist’s Choice:
Balancing Act
Ajay Kumar

Editor’s Choice:
Driving in the Rain
Christopher Shipman

 

June 2022 – M-A Murphy’s “Kennedy Lake”

Artist’s Choice:
June 24, 2022
Sarah Russell

Editor’s Choice:
Poem with a Cloud and Frank Ocean Lyrics
José Felipe Ozuna

 

May 2022 – Danelle Rivas’s “El Camino de Esmeralda”

Artist’s Choice:
Camouflage
Katie Kemple

Editor’s Choice:
Laparoscopy, or a Half-Birth
Gabriella Graceffo

 

April 2022 – Greg Clary’s “Truck Stop Shell”

Artist’s Choice:
The Next Time
Byron Hoot

Editor’s Choice:
Broken Places by Daylight
Sandra Kasturi

 

March 2022 – Natascha Graham’s “Anonymous Was a Woman”

Assistant Editor’s Choice:
Her Vanity
Marc Alan Di Martino

Editor’s Choice:
Angular Bones
Jeanie Tomasko

 

February 2022 – Sarah-Jane Crowson’s “Diaphona”

Artist’s Choice:
Homemaker
Mary Meriam

Editor’s Choice:
My Animal Understudy Replaced Me in the School Production of The Tempest
Luigi Coppola

 

January 2022 – Matthew King’s “Dark Figures”

Artist’s Choice:
Emotional Self-Regulation with Birds and Gifted Child
Sean Kelbley

Editor’s Choice:
Why I Love That We’re Not Gods
Sean Keck

 

December 2021 – Bruce McClain’s “Nature People #8”

Artist’s Choice:
Last Reach
Wendell Smith

Editor’s Choice:
The Widower
Nick Bertelson

 

November 2021 – Shannon Jackson’s “Easy Like Sunday Morning”

Artist’s Choice:
This Room
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
Study Abroad
Cassie Burkhardt

 

October 2021 – Gouri Prakash’s “Family”

Artist’s Choice:
Grief
Susan Carroll Jewell

Editor’s Choice:
On Getting Your Ducks in a Row
Matthew King

 

September 2021 – Rachel Slotnick’s “The Blood in the Veins”

Artist’s Choice:
Revelations
Sean Wang

Editor’s Choice:
Like Dust
Ian Opolski

 

August 2021 – Emily Rankin’s “Rosetta Stone”

Artist’s Choice:
Oracle
Robert E. Ray

Editor’s Choice:
Griefsong Heard at Sea
Shannon Mann

 

July 2021 – Lynn Tait’s “Waste”

Artist’s Choice:
Self-Doubt
Tamara Raidt

Editor’s Choice:
Aloft
Heidi Williamson

 

June 2021 – Annie Kuhn’s “Sunline”

Artist’s Choice:
Color / Off-Color
Emily Pease

Editor’s Choice:
Learning to Swim
C.J. Farnsworth

 

May 2021 – Neena Sethia’s “Contradictions of Being”

Artist’s Choice:
Gods, Monsters, and Complex PTSD
Elizabeth Train-Brown

Editor’s Choice:
What It Is Is What It Is Not and What It Is Not Is What It Is
Karan Kapoor

 

April 2021 – Jojo’s “While Thinking About Snow and Ice”

Artist’s Choice:
A Short Poem About Many Things
Lynn Robertson

Editor’s Choice:
White Spots
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

 

March 2021 – Susy Kamber’s “Into Thee”

Artist’s Choice:
Supernatural
Laura Theis

Editor’s Choice:
Darling
Jonathan Langley

 

February 2021 – Claire Ibarra’s “Cloud Dance”

Artist’s Choice:
Faces in the Clouds
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
Telling It Through a Broken Lens
Bola Opaleke

 

January 2021 – Danny Masks’s “Bucket”

Artist’s Choice:
Call Me Boy on Saturdays
Jackson Jesse Nash

Editor’s Choice:
Bound for Glory
Melissa McKinstry

 

December 2020 – Dominique Dève’s “A Horizon Is Vague at a Distance”

Artist’s Choice:
Wilhelmina
Kyle Potvin

Editor’s Choice:
A Horizon Is Vague at a Distance
Martin Willitts Jr.

 

November 2020 – Kim Sosin’s “Leaping Crane”

Artist’s Choice:
Crane Possibly Walking on Water
Erin Newton Wells

Editor’s Choice:
Birdwoman
Lexi Pelle

 

October 2020 – Christopher Whitney’s “Dream Spirit”

Artist’s Choice:
One for Sorrow
Carmel Buckingham

Editor’s Choice:
Four Loaves of Stone, Ascending
Joel Vega

 

September 2020 – Pat Singer’s “Pool Head”

Artist’s Choice:
Visiting the Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center, Winter Park Florida
Vivian Shipley

Editor’s Choice:
In the Dream-Pool
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

August 2020 – Liz Magee’s “Blue Bowl”

Artist’s Choice:
Mantra
Michael Harty

Editor’s Choice:
A Duty to Look Beautiful
Patty Holloway

July 2020 – Aurore Uwase Munyabera’s “Conflict Resolution”

Artist’s Choice:
Stepfather
Anna Cianciolo

Editor’s Choice:
Circles
Nikita Parik

June 2020 – Denise Sedor’s “The Old Paper Mill”

Artist’s Choice:
Eulogy
Brenda Lee Ranta

Editor’s Choice:
Upstate
Marc Alan Di Martino

May 2020 – Megan Merchant’s “Shadowplay”

Artist’s Choice:
Copulations
Marjorie Thomsen

Editor’s Choice:
There Are Two of Us
Vasvi Kejriwal

April 2020 – Laura R. McCullough’s “Mund”

Artist’s Choice:
The Larger Half
Eric Kilpatrick

Editor’s Choice:
Presidential Fitness Test
Bill Hollands

March 2020 – Kenneth Borg’s “Cour des Voraces”

Artist’s Choice:
Vast Silence
Sally Cobau

Editor’s Choice:
Rain” (haiku)
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

February 2020 – Marc Alan Di Martino’s “Indietro”

Artist’s Choice:
They Tried to Cover Her Up
Stephanie Shlachtman

Editor’s Choice:
When Peeled Back
Mary Ann Honaker

January 2020 – Kate Peper’s “Open All Night”

Artist’s Choice:
An Index of Visitors
Ajay Kumar

Editor’s Choice:
Cheer
Sean Kelbley

December 2019 – Natalie Seabold’s “Bound”

Artist’s Choice:
Greetings Unanswered
Joshua Martin

Editor’s Choice:
Seeking Purpose
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

November 2019 – Alice Pettway’s “Dog Walking”

Artist’s Choice:
The Anatomy of Endings
Anoushka Subbaiah

Editor’s Choice:
A Caricature
Bola Opaleke

October 2019 – Dana St. Mary’s “Brainyo”

Artist’s Choice:
The Metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa
Jaime Mera

Editor’s Choice:
After the Extinction
Susan Carroll Jewell

September 2019 – Asher ReTech’s “Loss for Words”

Artist’s Choice:
Artifacts from the Buffalo Trunk Mfg. Co. (Defunct)
Rachel Welton

Editor’s Choice:
Budget Cuts
Danny Eisenberg

August 2019 – Kim Tedrow’s “Thai Bees”

Artist’s Choice:
Misinterpreting a Collage During Trump’s Presidency
Jaime Mera

Editor’s Choice:
Bee Sting in the Eye
James Valvis

July 2019 – B.A. Van Sise’s “Restricted | U.S. Air Force”

Artist’s Choice:
Time Travel
Alida Rol

Editor’s Choice:
Naming the Beasts
Elizabeth Morton

June 2019 – Nikki Zarate’s “Blue Whale”

Artist’s Choice:
Ink Blots
Matt Quinn

Editor’s Choice:
Kenai
Katherine Fallon

May 2019 – Ellen McCarthy’s “Desert Road”

Artist’s Choice:
The Years We Lived in the Desert
Megan Merchant

Editor’s Choice:
The Optimist
Emily Sperber

April 2019 – Denise Zygadlo’s “Kandinsky’s Slippers”

Artist’s Choice:
In the Nostalgia Chair
Matthew Murrey

Editor’s Choice:
Art Therapy
Aaric Tan Xiang Yeow

March 2019 – Betsy Mars’s “Floating”

Artist’s Choice:
Trompe L’oeil
Juliet Latham

Editor’s Choice:
Living in Space After a Break-Up
Jaime Mera

February 2019 – Justin Hamm’s “Work Gloves”

Artist’s Choice:
Tan Hides and Hard Stuff
Lisha Nasipak

Editor’s Choice:
Sometimes a Man Has to Get His Hands Dirty
Alexandre Mikano

January 2019 – Vasu Tolia’s “Belle of the Ball”

Artist’s Choice:
Self-Portrait
Rodrigo Dela Pena

Editor’s Choice:
My Mother Was a Dancer and She Never Looked Back
Luigi Coppola

December 2018 – Kari Gunter-Seymour’s “Untitled”

Artist’s Choice:
Substance
Peg Duthie

Editor’s Choice:
Shell Thick and Her Own Planet
Angie Mason

November 2018 – Nicolette Daskalakis’s “Eat Me”

Artist’s Choice:
Placebo
Jill M. Talbot

Editor’s Choice:
The Happy Game
Sean Kelbley

October 2018 – Courtney Carroll’s “Hanging Collage”

Artist’s Choice:
What Is Not Lost
Sharon Cote

Editor’s Choice:
Locked Brakes on Blacktop
Guinotte Wise

September 2018 – Karen Kraco’s “Back of the Beach”

Artist’s Choice:
Beer, Buoy, Boat, Board
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
The Happy Meditator
Katherine Huang

August 2018 – Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “Waiting”

Artist’s Choice:
That Bit Me
Matthew Murrey

Editor’s Choice:
Sonnet for the Night Shift
Kim Harvey

July 2018 – Bryan DeLae’s “What Once Was”

Artist’s Choice:
Relic
Ginny Lowe Connors

Editor’s Choice:
Grave of a Tourist’s Trap
Hannah V. Norman

June 2018 – Gretchen Rockwell’s “The Sound of Wings”

Artist’s Choice:
The Shape of Your Elbow
Jack McGavick

Editor’s Choice:
Love Poem to My Wife, with Pigeons
James Valvis

May 2018 – Jen Ninnis’s “Message in a Bottle”

Artist’s Choice:
Starfish
Michael Strand

Editor’s Choice:
Dispatch from an Inland University
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

April 2018 – Melody Carr’s “Through the Looking Glass”

Artist’s Choice:
Facial Recognition
Janice Zerfas

Editor’s Choice:
Your Favorite Writer Is Not Your Mother
Jill M. Talbot

March 2018 – Marion Clarke’s “Chickens!”

Artist’s Choice:
Wildflowers
Paul T. Corrigan

Editor’s Choice:
The Visitant
Marietta McGregor

February 2018 – Jeff Doleman’s “Nine Lives”

Artist’s Choice:
Cobalt Blue
Christine Michel

Editor’s Choice:
Bright Blue Muscle Car
Mike Good

January 2018 – Laura Christensen’s “Muse”

Artist’s Choice:
Half of Everything
James Valvis

Editor’s Choice:
Getting Sober
James Croal Jackson

December 2017 – Barbara Graff’s “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”

Artist’s Choice:
Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
Here, She Said
Chris Ransick

November 2017 – Phyllis Meredith’s “Wind-Blown Meadow”

Artist’s Choice:
Young Medusa in the Fall
J.P. Dancing Bear

Editor’s Choice:
Surf Days
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

October 2017 – Robb Shaffer’s “Biltmore Backyard”

Artist’s Choice:
You Moved Your Whole Town
Paul T. Corrigan

Editor’s Choice:
A Season of Bricks
Simon Costello

September 2017 – Jody Kennedy’s “Agnes Was Here”

Artist’s Choice:
Saved or Spared
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass
Zoë Brigley Thompson

August 2017 – Jennifer O’Neill Pickering’s “Street Folks”

Artist’s Choice:
Trajectory
Ann Giard-Chase

Editor’s Choice:
Mint in Pots
Ann Wuehler

July 2017 – Samantha Gee’s “Portrait of a Kitchen”

Artist’s Choice:
My First Body Is Beautiful Until
Reese Conner

Editor’s Choice:
After Cleaning the Kitchen Again, He Realizes
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

June 2017 – Ryan Schaufler’s “No Name #2”

Artist’s Choice:
Blue Rain Clouds, Reddish Ground, and Tall Crosses
Jose Rizal Reyes

Editor’s Choice:
A Thousand Possible Clouds
Valentina Gnup

May 2017 – Soren James’ “Pink Bird Corridor”

Artist’s Choice:
Birds of a Feather
Lianne Kamp

Editor’s Choice:
She Tells Him of Her Fears
Priyam Goswami Choudhury

April 2017 – Laura Jensen’s “And the Wolf”

Artist’s Choice:
The Woman and the Wolf
Melissa Fite Johnson

Editor’s Choice:
Coyote
Suzanne Langlois

March 2017 – Lisa Ortega’s “La Familia”

Artist’s Choice:
Chanclas, Find Our Ground
Gloria Amescua

Editor’s Choice:
Modern American Gothic
Stephen Harvey

February 2017 – Debbie McAfee’s “Hwy 41”

Artist’s Choice:
Tanka (Lonely Highway)
Tracy Davidson

Editor’s Choice:
Threading North and South
Matthew Murrey

January 2017 – Harry Wilson’s “Days in San Francisco #1, 1984”

Artist’s Choice:
A Town of Mirrors and Quaking Forty-Fours
Richard Manly Heiman

Editor’s Choice:
An Accounting
Joanna Preston

December 2016 – Chelsea Welsh’s “Caught in the Days Unraveling”

Artist’s Choice:
Menarche
Melina Papadopoulos

Editor’s Choice:
Haiku
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetango

November 2016 – Arushi Raj’s “Light”

Artist’s Choice:
The Surface of Light
Martin Willitts Jr.

Editor’s Choice:
Illuminated
Sherry Barker Abaldo

October 2016 – Alexandra de Kempf’s “Family Matters”

Artist’s Choice:
PTSD
Bill Glose

Editor’s Choice:
Nuclear Family Warfare
Jane Noel Dabate

September 2016 – Ilenia Pezzaniti’s “They All Slept Here”

Artist’s Choice:
Calendario
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
HotelReview.com – Stay Where You Are, Which Is Here!
T.J. Peters

August 2016 – Heshani Sothiraj Eddleston’s “Clay Hands”

Artist’s Choice:
What We Keep in Clay
Hannah Siobhan

Editor’s Choice:
Throwback at the Art Show
Carol Kanter

July 2016 – Suzanne Simmons’ “Trespass”

Artist’s Choice:
Eco Echo: An Oldster’s Tale
Devon Balwit

Editor’s Choice:
Memoria
Merlin Ural Rivera

June 2016 – James Croal Jackson’s “Go Your Own Way”

Artist’s Choice:
I Don’t Understand Poetry
Jill M. Talbot

Editor’s Choice:
The Climb
Jeffrey Bean

May 2016 – Catherine Edmund’s “Castlerigg”

Artist’s Choice:
Underneath a Car on the Highroad …
Alexander James

Editor’s Choice:
Alone in Love
Mary Meriam

April 2016 – Robert Dash’s “Into the Mystic”

Artist’s Choice:
Invisible
Ann Giard-Chase

Editor’s Choice:
[Here, said the ocean]
Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr.

March 2016 – Thomas Terceira’s “Metamorphosis 2”

Artist’s Choice:
To Lose and Catch the Trail
Claire Kruesel

Editor’s Choice:
The Balcony Collapses and I Become a Bird
Rebecca Valley

February 2016 – Dave Thewlis’s “Met”

Artist’s Choice:
There, in Folded Space, We Must Have Met
Rommel Chrisden Samarita

Editor’s Choice:
In the Museum of Cold Ideas
Ginny Lowe Connors

January 2016 – Ruth Bavetta’s “Chonicle”

Artist’s Choice:
It Won’t Make the News
Rosemerry Trommer

Editor’s Choice:
Anatomy of a Fustercluck
Stephanie L. Harper

December 2015 – Colleen McLaughlin’s “Contrail”

Artist’s Choice:
Untitled
Angela Johnson

Editor’s Choice:
Contrails
D.R. James

November 2015 – Megan Tutolo’s “City Night”

Artist’s Choice:
Map to the Moon
Matthew Murrey

Editor’s Choice:
Divining
Rosemerry Trommer

October 2015 – Ana Prundaru’s “Beach”

Artist’s Choice:
Kamakura Beach, 1333
Mary Kendall

Editor’s Choice:
The View from the Café
Matt Quinn

September 2015 – Sarah Oyetunde’s “Moon”

Artist’s Choice:
Sister Moon
Jane Williams

Editor’s Choice:
Things You Cannot Answer
Margaret Donsbach Tomlinson

August 2015 – Howard R. Debs’ “Ice House”

Artist’s Choice:
Ice House
Ann Giard-Chase

Editor’s Choice:
Offering
Arnold Perrin

July 2015 – Aparna Pathak’s “Goats”

Artist’s Choice:
Ram Tested at Mount Vert
Grant Quackenbush

Editor’s Choice:
Cruelest of All Are the Gods Who Never Frown
Michael Meyerhofer

June 2015 – Alisa Golden’s “Bench”

Artist’s Choice:
People of the Megabus
Justin Barisich

Editor’s Choice:
Route 9
Martin Willitts, Jr.

May 2015 – Åsa Antalffy Eriksson’s “Forest”

Artist’s Choice:
Teeny Tiny
Matthew Murrey

Editor’s Choice:
Abduction
Kate Gaskin

Spring 2015 – Gail Goepfert’s “Friendship Flowers”

Artist’s Choice:
Potpourri
Liz N. Clift

Editor’s Choice:
Location’s Everything
Steven Dondlinger

. . .

Winter 2014 – James Bernal’s “Mysterious Figure”

Artist’s Choice:
Clean White Sheets
M

Editor’s Choice:
Carelessness
Michael Hallock

. . .

Fall 2014 – Judy Keown’s “Argiope Spider”

Artist’s Choice:
The Writing Spider
Paula Schulz

Editor’s Choice:
The Writing Spider (Haiku)
Caroline Giles Banks

January 12, 2025

Rose Lennard

LA IS BURNING, COUNTRIES ARE AT WAR, AND I AM SO DAMN GRATEFUL FOR MY SHOWER

And god said, Let there be showers!
and water fell on the bowed heads and shoulders
of people throughout the land, and sluiced
over breasts and bellies and buttocks,
coursed down limbs and fingers and toes;
and the water ran hallowed and hot on cold days,
and blessedly cool in Summer’s heat, it rinsed sleep
from just-awoken eyes, washed mud and sweat
off tingling skin, it mingled with piss
and tears and bodily fluids, gulped shit,
unwelcome hair, the tiny invisible eggs
of parasites. The people dripped and shone.
They took showers when they ached,
to wake up or wind down, or when
they were lonely and longed to be touched.
They fucked and screamed in long steamy showers,
and babies were conceived as windows fogged
and walls streamed and blossomed with mould.
And the water ran and ran and ran,
it obeyed the rules of water: to find
its own level, to dissolve, carry, deposit.
It took our chemicals and waste, and lo,
it whisked them to a place the people
called away. And maybe god also said, let there be
sewage farms, and factories to turn out boilers
and pipes and flanged rubber seals,
and nodding donkeys sucking oil out
of desert sands, and let there be plumbers
and designers and people packing marble tesserae
into crates, and yes, let there be politicians
telling us we have a god-given right
to use as much of this goddamn planet
as our squeaky-clean fingers can grip;
and did god say, let there be firefighters with freshly-
bathed children sleeping in beds, let them hose
god-given water over the smouldering roofs
of mansions nestled in droughted hills,
let them risk their lives putting out blazes
round the blue-tiled pools of celebrities?
 
Let the water run off asphalt and concrete,
let it run to the ocean to try to forget
all it has seen and all it has swallowed,
let it return to the fish and the turtles
and the immense forgiveness of whales, let it cry—
My god, why have you forsaken me?
 

from Poets Respond

__________

Rose Lennard: “Sometimes I marvel at the luxury that is a shower, a glory that is often taken for granted. I’m not religious, but nevertheless steeped in the language of Christianity when it comes to gratitude and wonder. But if we believe that god made the good things, what can we say about the bad? Robin Wall Kimmerer (in Braiding Sweetgrass) tells of the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee people, which says ‘We are grateful that the waters are still here and doing their duty of sustaining life on Mother Earth’. Water has been given such heavy duties, and modern life means we cannot help but abuse water every day with our wastage and pollution.”

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December 5, 2024

Mark Evan Johnston

MOTEL NIGHT ATTENDANT

Out here on Route 38,
I’ve learned the difference
between noise and sound.
Sound is familiar: the whirr
and clank of the ice machine,
the clink of a radiator,
the sough of the wind,
an occasional train.
Here noise means trouble.
Number 32, angry
with his wife, throws
a Gideon at her head.
I only hope he doesn’t
throw the lamp.
I sit here beneath
sixty watts of darkness
reading a trash novel,
waiting for the cheap tinkle
of this small bell to sound
but it never does.
Everything is in order:
the linens (call them that)
for tomorrow’s chambermaids (call them that),
the books, the Coke machine.
I make sure the Planter’s peanuts
don’t turn green
behind their sun-struck plastic.
Sometimes I almost hope
for trouble: a random shout,
an untimely splash in the pool,
a crying out that doesn’t
have to do with sex.
I want to have to go down
to Number 18 and set
things straight.
Years ago (here comes old Krebs),
we had a murder here,
before my time.
(He works the night-trick
at the mill.)
Some loon got trashed
(Krebs doesn’t stop to talk)
and poured beer on his wife
while she was getting off
on the Magic Fingers.
(Krebs always leaves
his shoes outside his door.)
He cried and tried to blame
it on the management, but
it came out he tampered
with the wires. Dupard
was his name, Canadian.
But don’t get me wrong.
I’m not looking to open up
Number 10 and find someone
dangling from the south end
of my sheets, or blood
pooling from under
the bathroom door.
Krebs, a night’s work himself,
has the country music on too loud.
The 3:15 sounds lonely,
the bell stands mute,
the buzzing of our new
neon sign would like
to drive me crazy.
But that’s not a noise.
That’s a sound.
No trouble tonight.
 

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

__________

Mark Evan Johnston: “A few years back, when I would visit my daughters outside Pittsburgh, I stayed at a small motel. It had the air of being the sort of place where someone might have been murdered once, or would someday be murdered. I realized as I thought about it that this impression was created by the expectant silence of the place, a silence into which random sounds would occasionally intrude. In ‘Motel Night Attendant,’ I have attempted to register how these small intrusions might strike the speaker of the poem.”

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