March 20, 2024

C.L. Bledsoe & Michael Gushue

THE WEATHER

Imagine the Earth is eating crackers in bed.
The crumbs are our lost days. They look toward
the coup de grace of the great Shaking Out
of the Quilt. The weather is always late to the party
and never brings wine. It stands in the corner checking
dating apps on its phone while everyone waits
for the thunder. See how easy it is to get off track?
And paying attention has gotten so expensive.
We were talking about my ex whose pants
you tried to get into by distracting each leg
with your pretty words. How would that work
in the afterlife? All the people we fucked
gabbing about how well we did. Or didn’t.
It’s my word against theirs you might think.
At least there weren’t any witnesses.
But there are always witnesses—millions
of them, numberless as crumbs. What do they
want? Someone to notice they’re leaving,
to pretend to miss them when they’re gone.
Is that too much to ask? Check yes or no.
 

from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration

__________

C.L. Bledsoe & Michael Gushue: “One of us will come up with a start to a poem. It might be a title or a line or a few lines that seem promising. Then he’ll email that start to the other. If it sparks something, that one will add more lines—how many will depend on how far the initial lines take him. After this, we go back and forth. Often, one of us will decide to cut or edit what’s already gone before, regardless of who wrote it, and that’s fine because that’s how the poem is evolving. We trust each other, and we can separate ego from the process and our faith in the poem. We have a similar approach and style regarding certain images and ideas, a kind of shorthand or Morse code that comes in handy as the poem coalesces. We both have a sense of when a poem has a good shape, has gone satisfactorily from point A to point B, and has clicked shut at the end. After that, one of us might go over one or two more times to smooth it out, and then we’ll move it over to the finished file. People have said that they can’t tell which of us has written what parts of a poem. As you can see, our process is informal and improvisatory. It’s a back-and-forth game that more often than not surprises both of us with the result.”

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March 19, 2024

Denise Duhamel

POEM IN WHICH BARBIE QUALIFIES FOR MEDICARE

March 9, 2024

Barbie never thought too much about her eligibility.
She’d loved AARP—the discounts at Sunglass Hut
and Outback Steakhouse—when she waved
her bright red card. She’d been born to shop,
but the medical world was still a mystery to her.
Sure, one of her first careers was as a Registered Nurse,
and a decade later, she became an MD. But she had
little experience being a patient except when children
made her a papier mâché arm cast or shaved off her hair
in play-chemo. Without vertebrae or femur,
Barbie never took a bone density test or had to worry
about osteoporosis. Menopause had been a breeze—
no hot flashes, no bleeding to miss. She was spotless
when it came to age spots, even after all those years
in the sun. No pee when she sneezed. No cataracts
despite the fact that she never blinked. She still drove
at night but was considering trading in her convertible
for a cushy Lincoln town car to arrive in Medicare-style
for her annual checkups. She was looking forward to a ride
in an MRI then consulting a podiatrist to see if anyone could
at last help ease her feet into New Balance sneakers.
The dermatologist told her Botox was covered if Barbie
suffered from migraines. Her smile had never given way
to laugh lines or crow’s feet. Still, Barbie lifted her hands
to her temples and told a white lie—why yes,
those headaches have sometimes been so fierce I’ve had to retreat
into my dark box to rest. After all, Barbie
was an American boomer and wanted her fair share,
what she thought she deserved, what was coming to her.
 

from Poets Respond

__________

Denise Duhamel: “I didn’t think I had another Barbie poem in me! (I thought I’d put her to rest in 1997 after the publication of my book Kinky.) But I couldn’t resist the idea of Barbie being eligible for Medicare.” (web)

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March 18, 2024

Roberta Beary & Lew Watts

TWO PINTS

fireside rug
wishing the dog
would take me
 
Six years it was, sleeping on couches. Waiting for Mam to get better. Every aunt took a turn. And every uncle.
 
earliest sketchbook
red running
off his face
 
Sounds grand. Not like at ours. No one’s touching his balls, Gramps would scream, after one too many. Granny chopping the veggies with a vengeance. We kids turned up the TV but couldn’t stop staring. At their collie, humping the loveseat. 
 
school project
the futile search
for scissors
 
Huh! Never had a dog. Had a rat once. Thought it was a boy. One of my cousins dissected it. Said it was a girl. That she could tell ’cos it didn’t cry.
 
upping the ante
after doctors and nurses …
first switchblade
 
That’s nothing. Found a photo of Da in a shoebox. Him in his uniform holding it glued to his shoulder. That little smile. A badge for marksmanship, he said. As he pointed his rifle at the boyfriend. 
 
goth makeup
blending in
the bruises
 
Bruises? You were lucky. My whole body was a bruise. And knees were always red-raw. Had to lick the driveway clean. Whenever they let me out. The only unscarred skin I saw was through a keyhole. 
 
eyeball to eyeball
the one-upmanship
of burst blood vessels
 

from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration

__________

Roberta Beary & Lew Watts: “Lew and I have worked together in the past (we are co-authors, with Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide), but we have never written a haibun together. Traditionally, linked haibun involve alternating couplets of prose and haiku, where each prose sections links to but shifts away from the preceding haiku. Since we have both written extensively about our difficult childhoods, we had the idea of each of us writing alternating couplets that would escalate in gruesome absurdity; a kind of parody of ourselves. Those aficionados of Monty Python may recognize elements of their famous sketch, ‘The Four Yorkshiremen.’” (web)

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March 17, 2024

Tishani Doshi

KILL THEM IN THE MORNING

I’m trying to find where it says,
If your enemy comes to slay you at night,
kill them in the morning. What happens
in the hours of waiting? Do you sing
to one another across the trenches,
stargaze from casements, then set off
to duel at first light? What is it about the sun
rising that’s so self-righteous? The firstness,
the lightness? There’s an allegory somewhere
about a girl holding scissors encircled by soldiers
with guns. Don’t we know that the dragging
from trains takes place after dark, that wars
always happen offstage until they’re not? Summer
is almost upon us, romantic and lonely. I know,
I know, no tightrope-walking allowed between our house
and the neighbour’s. Haven’t you dreamed
of disappearing for a day, then returning
to life, triumphant? Wouldn’t you want
to know who missed you, who rejoiced?
The idea that there are no innocent people.
What colour would you call this hair
under the rubble? My enemy’s enemy
is an Ottoman couch. But we’re here now,
those of us alive, standing on the beach,
facing the rosy dawn—how it slip slaps us
into forgiveness, how we turn the other cheek.
 

from Poets Respond
March 17, 2024

__________

Tishani Doshi: “Not sure there are any explanations. How must we be alone, how must we be together?” (web)

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March 16, 2024

Lynne Thompson

A LOVER, REJECTED, REJECTS THE MYTH THAT IS BILLIE HOLIDAY—

knows she was an uncommon arroyo who understood
that blue on the quintile is a withering thing;

knows Billie lived in an upended Vermont and was
not unlike a nova or a seed in a scalawag’s belly;

figures that La Gardenia’s mistake was believing that
autumn in New York would make a satisfactory break

and that junk was the best horse she never saddled.
But I have learned to beware the tonsils of swivelhipped

conquerors whose lanolin cannot absorb
loneliness. I have gotten lost in the politics of

undressed mud and am no longer obliged to lie down
with fat cats. When I am too scared to dream,

I, my own bald-faced tympani, admonish my dismal pen
to publish the music that will alarm my arrogant judges.

from Rattle #22, Winter 2004

__________

Lynne Thompson: “’A Lover, Rejected’ was the chance to allow language to elope with some of my favorite concepts—sass, skepticism and Billie Holiday, with bon mots like ‘scalawag’ and ‘quintile’ in attendance.” (web)

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March 15, 2024

Kristin George Bagdanov

HOLDING LIGHT

My father took me to the shed
Sunday afternoons to fix piecemeal
wood into frames for selling.

He didn’t talk unless
something displeased him,
like when I tripped over the scrap pile
and sent the bag of nails flying.

Then he would open his mouth
and shut his hand. He’d pound me
like a fence post, say he’d fix
that posture if it was the last thing.

On quiet days we worked
in separate ends of the shed,
sanding and squaring as light built
and collapsed around us

until the dark air finally came
inside. Then father would twist his head
until just the corner of his cobalt eye
met mine and bark for the lantern.

And some days he would strike
the match himself, hovering over
wick until he felt flame lick
through fifty years calloused on his palm.

On those days he would turn
his face and mutter at me,
and I would stand beside him
and I would hold the light.

from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Kristin George Bagdanov: “Truthfully, the seed for this poem came from a reality home-makeover show on a very boring morning at the gym. A very small seed, rest assured, but once again it reminds me that to write is to be aware, to find reason for pause during even the most ordinary and mundane activities. In addition to making poetry out of banalities, I pride myself in creating catchy jingles, usually while making homemade soup for an ever-increasing quantity of people.” (web)

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March 14, 2024

Lowell Jaeger

TRASH

This year’s leaves are last year’s leaves
again. Even the loam breathes.
I believe this and Leonard YoungBear says
in the old days there was no such thing as trash:

Indians camped and left ashes only, or bones,
bits of hide, feathers, mounds of buffalo dung.
What the dogs didn’t eat, coyotes did.
Or wind, snow. Beneath trees and prairie grass

everything from the earth returned. Human life
too, Leonard says, should be like that.
I know, I say, I’m not afraid anymore
of dying. It’s trash

that worries me. Caskets. I keep thinking
of tin cans, foil, yellow rubber raincoats don’t
rot very quick, don’t burn either; bury them
and something spits them back. I’d sooner fall

in the woods, feed the sharp teeth of many hungers
beyond my own. And part of me will swim downstream
in the cold eyeball of a fish next time, my soul
under the wings of a young bird learning to fly.

from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Lowell Jaeger: “As a teen in the great north woods, I spent long quiet hours in my hometown library, where I found solace from troubles at home, troubles in school, and troubles in the world. I sat in the big leather chairs and read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. I had no clear understanding of the book, such a foreign, worldly voice, so unlike the talk of local lumberjacks and factory workers. Yet that poem and I sat and conversed mysteriously beyond the words on the page. For a while, that poem was my best friend. I’d be honored if any poem of mine were ever so esteemed.” (web)

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