Pamela Manasco: “This poem responds to the recent firing of several employees at a Prattville, Alabama, library, which itself is related to the recent decision of the Alabama Senate to pass SB10, a bill which allows local city councils to fire library board members. After Prattville library director Andrew Foster publicly shared emails from a board member who requested that some juvenile library materials be moved or removed from the library, Foster was fired without the board of trustees providing information about which library rule he supposedly violated. Later, four librarians closed the library in response to the firing—and they were also fired. It’s a messy story and a scary one which shows the future Alabama’s Republican government members want: remove any library material which violates ‘Alabama values’ (good luck finding a definition for those, by the way), and fire anyone who disagrees.” (web)
Brendan Constantine & Andi Myles: “We both wrote our five questions/answers on our own before seeing the other’s and texted them to each other. First, Andi provided the questions and Brenden supplied the answers and then we switched roles. This was not edited to be anything more than it was—an exercise, a reaching out across thousands of miles sharing the answers without questions that plague us. It might seem like we cheated (the recurrence of fire in Act I? The dead and the endling? Stars and gods?) but we were equally surprised and delighted at the themes that emerged.” (web)
“Things That Collapse” by Jonathan HarrisPosted by Rattle
Image: “Graphing Uncertainty V” by Christine Crockett. “Things That Collapse” was written by Jonathan Harris for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
__________
Jonathan Harris
THINGS THAT COLLAPSE
Slumped in a lawn chair under a pink umbrella a hand fan on his belly
in a jackknifing heat that’s me I see now and those are my children
coming for me from our rose bed gone-under. They lay me
on the earth and fall in tight my son at my heart splitting
stones on my chest. On her knees and cell with 911
my daughter traces half/faces the wrinkles
on my forehead. She bends closer after
ending the call coos in my ear ruffling
her ringlets: orphans, origami, tents,
tables, tarantulas, hammocks,
accordions, waves. At least
those are the notes I’m
vaguely aware of
but find hard to
swallow.
A
slap on the cheek a shrug by my shoulders my children
Comment from the artist, Christine Crockett: “This poem handles the ekphrastic challenge with such craft and imagination. The concrete format of two ‘collapsing’ triangles not only mirrors the geometry of the collage, but also captures something profoundly human in its composition. The organic roundness of red at the center of the college is a pulsing, endangered heart. The first triangle tapers as the stricken narrator’s consciousness streams and ebbs into single-word utterances, each a play on triangular or folded forms: accordions, origami, tents. A heartbeat pause, then the poem pivots into the ‘slap’ and embrace of his son and daughter who revive him, ‘hinge’ him back into the widening world–bloodlines that stave off the ‘top-down-top-heavy’ world that threatens collapse.”
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)
“Two Pints” by Roberta Beary & Lew WattsPosted by Rattle
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.
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)
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)
