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March 28, 2024

“Shoulder MRI” by Elizabeth McMunn-TetangcoPosted by

Graphing Uncertainty V by Christine Crockett, abstract painting of lines and triangles in red and black

Image: “Graphing Uncertainty V” by Christine Crockett. “Shoulder MRI” was written by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

SHOULDER MRI

It doesn’t hurt it is
abstract.
 
The pain
is toothaches, but
 
displaced.
A refugee. There is
 
a word.
It’s like a hammer
 
and a nail, how everything
 
becomes your
pain. It sleeps and wakes.
 
It wakes you up. It goes all
 
egg-shaped, tastes
of blood. You
 
picture pain
in little threads, tender
 
as clams. Papier maché. You see
 
the torn part. No
 
one knows that it is there. It hates
this too.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “Even the title of this poem alone seems to me to resonate with the enigmatically compelling image—the abstract, angular, black-and-white tone reminiscent of an MRI scan. As the piece unfolds, I see an even stronger connection between the two: There’s an objectivity, a detachment, to the way the speaker describes pain, and yet also a vulnerable rawness that comes through, a contrast that reflects the distinction between the black-and-white angularity and the rounded red shape in the center. I love the way the poet writes in mostly clipped, staccato phrases—‘A refugee. There is / a word. / It’s like a hammer’–that don’t bely any feeling, and then the last line is the first time emotion is explicitly introduced, a surprising ending that renders the poem suddenly personal. In image and words alike, there is a beating heart under all this abstraction.”

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March 27, 2024

“Shorthand 6-Pak Rondelet” by Denise Duhamel & Maureen SeatonPosted by

Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton

SHORTHAND 6-PAK RONDELET

TL;DR
 
Too long; didn’t read
Didn’t want to miss Stranger Things
Too long; didn’t read
Watched Batman on YouTube instead
Of reading about men with wings
Or women having flings with kings
Too long; didn’t read
 
 
 
STFU
 
Shut the fuck up
Can’t you see I’m taking a nap?
Shut the fuck up
I’m dreaming of a hot hookup 
I made through my X-rated app 
I’m awake now in her jockstrap
Shut the fuck up
 
 
 
FWIW
 
For what it’s worth
I can’t make up an alibi
For what it’s worth
There’s nothing on this big old earth
Makes me weep worse and wonder why
I microwaved a butterfly
(For what it’s worth)
 
 
 
IMHO  
 
In my humble opinion
Joaquin Phoenix is a dreamboat
In my humble opinion
he became vegan—vermilion  
blood from a hook, a fish’s throat
that day dad took him on a boat 
That’s my humble opinion
 
 
 
TBH
 
To be honest
I prefer my GRNS FRSH, my STK
(To be honest)
BBQ or BRSD or BNLESS
Nothing tastes BTR than a GR8
Big SAL with a SD of BF
To be honest
 
 
 
WDYT
 
What do you think?
Is the planet going to shit?
What do you think?
I say we’re standing on the brink—
but is our disaster moonlit
so sweetly we keep missing it?
What do you think?
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration

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Denise Duhamel: “We had several memorial readings for Maureen, and my joke is that we had an open relationship and we weren’t monogamous. If you were there and ready to write, and you were a sweet soul, Maureen would write with you. She loved collaboration so much, and often collaborated with her students. Neil de la Flor and Kristine Snodgrass and Maureen were one set of collaborators (a triad), and then she had a foursome collaboration group with Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias. She also collaborated extensively with Sam Ace. Both Aaron Smith and I completed whole collaborative manuscripts with her while she was ill. She had all these different collaborations going on even through her illness and treatment.”

Maureen Seaton (October 20, 1947 – August 26, 2023) authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. She frequently collaborated with many poets, including Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.

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March 26, 2024

“Cheap Motels of My Youth” by George BilgerePosted by

George Bilgere

CHEAP MOTELS OF MY YOUTH

They lay somewhere between
the Sleeping In The Car era
and my current and probably final era,
the Best Western or Courtyard Marriott era.
 
The Wigwam. Log Cabin. Kozy Komfort
Hiway House. Star Lite. The Lazy A.
 
Just off the interstate, the roar
of the sixteen-wheelers all night long.
The dented tin door opening to the parking lot,
the broken coke machine muttering to itself.
 
“Color TV.” “Free HBO.” “Hang Yourself
in Our Spacious Closets.” A job interview
at some lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere
branch campus of some agricultural college
devoted to the research and development
of the soybean and related by-products.
 
Five-course teaching load, four of them
Remedial Comp. Candidate
must demonstrate familiarity
with the basic tenets of Christian faith.
Chance of getting the job
one in a hundred. Lip-sticked
cigarette butt under the bed.
Toilet seat with its paper band,
“Sanitized for Your Protection,”
dead roach floating in the bowl.
 
As the free HBO
flickers in the background,
you stare in the cracked mirror
at a face too young, too full of hope
to deserve this. And you wait
for the Courtyard Marriott era to arrive.
 

—from Cheap Motels of My Youth
2023 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

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George Bilgere: “When I was eight years old my parents got divorced. My mother packed her three kids into an old Chevy station wagon and drove us from St. Louis to Riverside, California, looking for a fresh start. She had visited there when she was an Army nurse stationed in LA during the war and fell in love with the place. That cross-country car trip, full of cheap diners, cheap hotels, and desperation, changed my life. I fell in love with the vastness and beauty, the glamor and tawdriness, of America. I’ve travelled all over the country since then, on that ancient and deeply American quest, the search for home.” (web)

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March 24, 2024

“Abecedarian for Alabama Libraries” by Pamela ManascoPosted by

Pamela Manasco

ABECEDARIAN FOR ALABAMA LIBRARIES

Alder to ash: what can be sacrificed,
boned, defanged, let it be. Burn it to
cinders to keep children civil.
Don’t end until not only paper’s
extinguished, but cards & computers, too.
Florida can’t win this heat. Don’t forget
gardens—sensory, learning—the kids’ tract,
hay mulched over marigold seeds
in the beds too early, and inside,
juried tables of books for belonging.
Keep matches to snuff out even
labels, hands that write, seed-like ideas—
maybe then it will be enough.
Never fix the broken down bridge
over Selma, unwalkable routes to food
pantries, potholes blowing tires, unfeeling,
quiet. Never pay the school lunch debts
rolling month to month. Why must we feed
starving children? Make sure they’re born,
that’s your job done. Do all in your power
until you have it all, so we look back with
vertigo at everything you took from us with
white noise. Don’t pay for college, for
Xanax, for unkillable hospital bills, and
years from now, we will not be 50th but
zero, praying daily at your altar.
 

—from Poets Respond
March 24, 2024

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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)

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March 22, 2024

“WHY I Am / BECAUSE You Are” by Brendan Constantine & Andi MylesPosted by

Brendan Constantine & Andi Myles

WHY AM I / BECAUSE YOU ARE

ACT I
Questions by Andi Myles / Answers by Brendan Constantine
 
Why do birds love blackberries?
Because I never make decisions at night.
 
Why does the color green make me happy?
Because fire can be kept on a shelf and forgotten.
 
Why is the ladybug always alone?
Because no one is more beautiful than when you tell them they are.
 
Why are you sad?
Because my mother still carries me.
 
Why does fire entrance?
Because of a Sunday in 1975 when no one could find the sky.
 
 
ACT II
Questions by Brendan Constantine / Answers by Andi Myles
 
Why are there so many falls?
Because horses always know their way home.
 
Why can’t I see the castle?
Because it is impossible to see both sides of the moon.
 
Why do the dead talk all night?
Because the endling is on the precipice of death.
 
Why is a snake always needed?
Because I have a weakness for women named Maria.
 
Why are the stars still waiting?
Because even gods die without love.
 

—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration

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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)

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March 21, 2024

“Things That Collapse” by Jonathan HarrisPosted by

Graphing Uncertainty V by Christine Crockett, abstract painting of lines and triangles in red and black

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)

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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
cry out: Dad! Dad! Don’t leave us! Don’t you dare
leave us! Then together scoop me up
in their arms and won’t let go as if
everything in our top-down top-
heavy world hinges
on the screws
holding.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2024, Artist’s Choice

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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.”

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March 19, 2024

“Poem in which Barbie Qualifies for Medicare” by Denise DuhamelPosted by

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

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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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