May 1, 2024

“A Step-by-Step Guide to Buying a Home” by Luigi CoppolaPosted by

Luigi Coppola

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BUYING A HOME

1. Decide if buying a home is right for you
Tomorrow morning, wake at dawn and look up at the sky
consider if it might fall, crack open and/or turn
and whether you ever want to see it again.
 
2. Decide if you should sell first
In your head, price tag your belongings, weigh up
the weights in your life and wait to see if they add up
to a mass that has value, a total that others would want.
 
3. Decide on your budget
Is that total, the sum of your life’s worth anything
to anyone? Does it hold up to your self-worth
and is it worth more or less than your intangible parts?
 
4. Get your finances in place
Stack coins in order of cleanliness,
notes in order of softness
cheques in order of love.
 
5. Decide where you want to live
Compare the surface of the sun with the moon,
dredge up the pond and place the fish on the line,
breathe in the air from every continent before dying.
 
6. Choose a specific property
Make sure to lick each brick and twang the aerial,
consider the lives that have passed by and if they looked
in the window, imagined themselves living in the living room.
 
7. Make an offer – and get it accepted
Offer skin, offer tea cosies, offer light,
offer the tie around your neck, offer offal,
offer more than you have by one single petal.
 
8. Arrange a mortgage
Turn left at the hospital, go past the charity shop,
turn right at the pharmacist, round the back of the library,
opposite the primary school—there you’ll find the devil’s door.
 
9. Hire a solicitor or conveyancer
File down a lucky coin and drag it along your palm,
let the blood settle on tissue paper, the iron
and fibres embracing on their desk.
 
10. Decide if you want a survey
See! The cracks! Hear! The mice!
Smell! The damp! Taste! The dust!
Touch! The emptiness in every room!
 
11. Arrange a deposit
Gather your friends and family, sit them
around a fire, build that fire to the tallest tree
and ask them to collect every ash flake.
 
12. Exchange contracts
Eyes – Fish Tank – Rollerblades – Steak
– Cape – Hatred – Job – Subordinates – Balaklava –
Cocktails – Horses (contracts exchanged)
 
13. Final arrangements and negotiations
I was engaged at four to my mother’s hairdresser’s
daughter. I can still feel her tiny hand in my mine
but I can’t remember her name.
 
14. Complete the sale
Shake hands across the threshold, make eye
contact for a second too long, make this uncomfortability
part of the process, remember their joyful regret.
 
15. Take possession of your new home
Lock the door, lie on the floor, stare at the ceiling,
the new plaster sky that is yours to paint anew
and a future you will make from someone else’s past.
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024

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Luigi Coppola: “While unpacking some (decade old?) boxes since our last house move (the scene from The Incredibles springs to mind), I was inspired by the title and headings used for an article from the HomeOwners Alliance website to write about the process, the headaches, the joy of a new house and then home. Various memories came flooding back, from childhood to adulthood, all compartmentalised but through various literal/metaphoric/symbolic lens, recalling Marianne Moore’s ars poetica within the longer version of her poem ‘Poetry’: ‘imaginary gardens with real toads.’” (web)

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April 30, 2024

“Synapses and Stardust” by Brandy NorrbomPosted by

Alignment II by John Paul Caponigro, surreal photograph of boulders over a sand dune

Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “Synapses and Stardust” was written by Brandy Norrbom for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Brandy Norrbom

SYNAPSES AND STARDUST

Six times you were cosmic dust in the universe
But this time you called me sanctuary running
Lines through the sand like bio-electricity the
Spaces between us humming like synapses you
Set us apart like monoliths in the desert sky all
Scratching shadows where the dark in me is
Pulling every state of was or being into the
Undertow of this magnetic rift and yes it’s
Polarized but so are the tides and the moon
Making us as orbital as all that other matter
Can we fold into and around each other a
Tesseract through time where every instance
Of you finds every instance of me?
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the idea of the ‘spaces between us humming like synapses,’ and the way one can almost sense that kind of electricity between the objects in this image. The thoughtful lack of punctuation makes the poem flow as if it’s all being said in one breath, which reflects the ‘suspended in space and time’ feeling of the artwork. The last two lines are beautiful and moving, and take the reader by surprise with their candid vulnerability. The ending seems to hang in the air after the poem is over, again perfectly mirroring the scene in the image.”

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April 29, 2024

“My Mother Says” by Amy ChanPosted by

Amy Chan

MY MOTHER SAYS

My mother says I sing like a bird
on a winter’s day,
my mother, whose grace catches,
light on water,
on her changing face.
 
But if I am the bird and she the sea, 
I sing because she flows through me.
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024

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Amy Chan: “Adrienne Rich writes that poetry (art, really) ‘ask[s] of us a grace in what we bear.’ That sums it up quite nicely for me—I write poems to find ‘grace in what we bear.’”

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April 28, 2024

“[translate me render me into the martian tongue …]” by Dmitry BlizniukPosted by

Dmitry Blizniuk

* * *

translate me render me into the martian tongue
across the black night
where the gun stock reaches the star.
beheaded houses hum in the gloom.
the neck vertebra of the torn staircases are exposed.
moonlight is bitter like the sap of killwort.
Lord translate my words.
we have not been born yet, but died already.
the evil sorcerer in his bunker gave the order
to annihilate all Ukrainians.
to burn all forms of memory. of life.
he poured a bucketful of flash drives into a bonfire.
our days are melting in the flames.
masses of memories of the universe.
 
I was young and once in a village I went diving
into the river after a running start.
rebar rods stood hidden underwater.
sharp rusted spikes.
the wooden fishing dock rotted away long ago.
for hours I chucked myself into the black river.
in the morning girl look here—you are covered with scratches.
on the legs, stomach, arms.
I was insanely lucky back then.
will I be lucky this day?
 
readers-refugees.
we pick the books off the shelves and knock
at every book’s cover. the classics.
let us into your paper worlds.
ray bradbury, sholokhov, leo tolstoy.
but no matter where I poke, it’s all For Thee the Bell Tolls.
I end up in War and insane Peace.
in Slaughterhouse-Number.
now the reality of our life is
Valley of the Red Data Book.
now every city is served
the cocktail Bloody Vlad.
crimson yolks float in dense murk
over the booze of events.
bombs gnaw at houses, schools, kindergartens, hospitals,
churches.
we are being freed of freedom and of lives.
the howling of sirens glides foreboding
air raid alarm—here comes flying
a purple swan with his head ripped away.
 
the dawn—a gray-blue
bigheaded infant resembling a shrimp.
labored breathing. pneumonia.
because of nights in a basement
a baby bird of mucus made its nest in the lungs.
yet another artillery barrage.
a rocket blasted an apartment in a skyscraper. a conflagration.
devil’s retrospective.
mom and the elder sister in the kitchen
are killed instantly by the explosion.
black thick smoke pours out of the corridor. billows.
burns a child’s eyes.
it’s not smoke-like, but black cotton candy.
the cat named Buttercup
is the first to tumble down to the asphalt
from the seventh-story window ledge.
thirteen-year old Misha follows him, leaps like a kitten
onto the enormous spire poplar—
planted three meters away from the balcony.
dry, slender branches break beneath the small body.
crackle.
it’s as if he is falling into an empty well,
inside it
sprouts a stinging biting tree.
the boy Misha finds a way
to snag his elbow on a thick branch
at the third-story level.
his ribs and left wrist are broken, but he’s alive.
he faints. translated, rendered safe.
 
people in the apartments.
butterflies under broken glass panes—
apollo, sailor. swallowtail, morpho menelaus—
with shrapnel-pins in their velvety backs
slowly, slowly
they lift off from the earth.
they rise together with the cement boxes.
but that’s impossible.
the butterfly collector is surprised.
how many more people will perish,
how many more worlds will vanish unexplored,
unnoticed. just like that.
by the sorcerous wish of the kremlin maniac.
 
Kharkiv 451.
two fire engines are already on the way.
carving corners an ambulance arrives at the entrance.
imperturbable medical angels.
dark-red scrubs. kevlars.
next to the car the cat
drags his back paws. crawls
towards the poplar. lifts his snout. screams horribly.
and the ambulance driver notices stuck in the crown
a child.
no stranger will save the people
the close ones and the distant ones
except us ourselves.
that’s why the boy Misha absolutely must survive.
that’s why we will win.
 
Translated from Russian by Yana Kane, edited by Bruce Esrig
 

—from Poets Respond
April 28, 2024

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Note from the translator Yana Kane: “Week after week, month after month, year after year I hear about Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine. Kharkiv is the city that has been subjected to especially vicious bombings. Yet each time the citizens of Ukraine, the citizens of Kharkiv respond with resilience and courage; each time they push back the darkness with their love of life. One of the ways I express my solidarity with them is by translating contemporary poetry written by Ukrainian authors. Dmitry Blizniuk is a Kharkiv poet who chronicles his city’s suffering and the indomitable spirit. Note that ‘we are being freed of freedom and our lives’ is a reference to Putin’s claim that he started the war in order to defend the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine against the discrimination by the Ukrainian government.”

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April 27, 2024

“The One and the Other” by Hayden SaunierPosted by

Hayden Saunier

THE ONE AND THE OTHER

The child hums as he carries, too late,
his grandmother’s sugar-dusted lemon-glazed cake

down the street to the neighbor who needs to be cheered,
too late for the neighbor

who’s stepped into the air
of her silent front hall from a ladder-backed chair

her church dress just pressed, her head in a loop she tied
into the clothesline, too late

he unlatches the gate,
walks up the brick walk on his tiptoes, avoiding the cracks

toward the door she unlocked, left ajar, who knows why
or for whom, if on purpose

or not, but because he’s too late
she’s gone still when he reaches the door and because

he’s too late, as he calls out and looks, brilliant sun
burns through haze

pours through sidelights and bevels
through chandelier prisms, strikes white sparks and purples

on ceiling and walls, on the overturned chair, on her stockings
her brown and white

spectator shoes on the floor
and because he’s too late he remembers both terror and beauty

but not which came first. But enough of the one
that he ran

and enough of the other
to carefully lay down the cake at her feet.

—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
Rattle Poetry Prize Winner

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Hayden Saunier: “I love the way objects and people and ideas find their way together in a poem. An old friend sent me an outrageous pound cake at Christmas and when I described it as sugar-dusted, lemon-glazed, the story of the boy in this poem, told to me years ago, came straight to my mind and stayed there. It was all in the cake: that sunny yellow circle with its center missing, dense, empty, bitter, sweet, the gestures we make too late, the child’s ability to take in everything at the same moment, at once and complete: It was all in the cake.” (web)

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April 26, 2024

“Just in Case You Should Meet Me on the Street” by Erik CampbellPosted by

Erik Campbell

JUST IN CASE YOU SHOULD MEET ME ON THE STREET

It’s come to this. Since last February I haven’t
touched you or anyone, save for my mechanic,
 
but that was by accident and in March and it
was only a handshake because I forgot he could
 
kill me without meaning to and, besides, I’ve known
him since junior high school. These days, I take
 
a couple of aspirin every morning just for good
luck. I go for one walk, sometimes two, daily,
 
just for research’s sake. Just to see, like some
crystalline anthropologist from the future, if
 
the present is like I imagine it or remember it
from my incessant apartment. I won’t come home
 
(sometimes I have to walk for miles. Once, a whole
day) until I’m convinced I’m not some simulacrum
 
(“Please, dog,” I’ve said aloud on walks, “bite my leg,
go for it. I need evidence”), part of some teenager’s
 
avatar on a campaign, wandering in the desert, banking
on the biblical: that doing so leads to the promised land,
 
or at least someplace worth selling or invading. So,
should I meet you on the street, after all of this (and “if”)
 
is over, and I hug you, I’ll not only be doing so too hard;
I will be trying to crush you before you can leave me again.
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024

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Erik Campbell: “I wrote the attached because I wanted to feel more alive and consequential than I have in ages.”

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April 25, 2024

“The Space Between” by Amelie FlaglerPosted by

Alignment II by John Paul Caponigro, surreal photograph of boulders over a sand dune

Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “The Space Between” was written by Amelie Flagler for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Amelie Flagler

THE SPACE BETWEEN

Perhaps equidistance is a secret to be explored.
I suggest it’s not something,
I believe it’s not nothing,
But a perfect illusion of what comes in between.
The things that we miss at the height of a scene.
Not as grand as the sky, or as low as the sands,
The air that’s unnoticed as it flows through the lands,
The blank space.
The missed place.
The dirt between home and first base.
 
So the zone between up and down lies still,
Forever ignored by the human’s will,
Floating and frozen, barely windblown,
Unmoving, unrecognized, encaptured in stone.
 
We continue our lives, always looking around,
Condoning our nature to miss middle-ground.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, John Paul Caponigro: “‘The Space Between’ engages the art directly, transcending mere description, surprisingly and insightfully noting what often goes unnoticed. Never departing from the original source, the observations it shares feel both personal and universal, reminding us of truths we already know but often forget. I feel I learned something while reading this poem written in response to my art; something that was intuitively felt became consciously clearer.”

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