August 19, 2024

“Fractured Double Ghazal” by Clif MasonPosted by

Clif Mason

FRACTURED DOUBLE GHAZAL

I love a woman 
whose hands are full of stars. 
When passion flares, 
I am a bowl of stars. 
 
I drink deep from her kiss, 
a flute of fire. 
After long drink, 
I owe no debt of fire. 
 
I seek her all night long 
through softest rain. 
At dawn, each puddle 
is a skull of stars. 
 
The world offers ample occasion 
for pain. 
I touch, unharmed, her hair, 
a net of fire. 
 
Our days’ exacting work 
keeps us apart. 
In hard daylight, 
there is a lull of stars. 
 
I cannot turn my gaze 
away from her face. 
Her hazel eyes are gems, 
deep set, of fire. 
 
Our nights of love 
are still but brief heartbeats. 
They burn forever bright— 
how cruel of stars. 
 
I try to hold love 
in a gentle grip. 
I learn you cannot make 
a pet of fire. 
 
In lonely distance 
lies chill perfection. 
As you know, Clif, 
that is the rule of stars. 
 
Swim, Clif, in the instant’s 
dark river of flame. 
Not to love is to feel 
a regret of fire.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal

__________

Clif Mason: “The ghazal satisfies the aesthetic yearnings of those who appreciate a certain regularity in their verse, as well as those who enjoy a certain disruption in their forms, as each couplet is independent of the others (and could, if one wished, stand alone as its own short poem). With classic forms like this, the question is always how both to respect it, and to make it new. I’ve attempted to do this by, first, doubling the form, intermixing two ghazals, and second, by fracturing the resulting form.” (web)

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August 18, 2024

“Why Wouldn’t Autonomous Cars Cry at Night?” by Ryan McCartyPosted by

Ryan McCarty

WHY WOULDN’T AUTONOMOUS CARS CRY AT NIGHT?

Awake and acutely aware
of each other’s proximity
to streetlights and the shifting
shapes of moons on their own
empty interiors, with enough
of them huddled in the lots,
why not honk? Why not holler
at the silent ones, identically dark
and empty on their left and right,
the whole still pile like a flicker
of a future scrapyard in the making?
Why not scream to call a crowd
of ghosts down from their squares
of light up there, those past
wanderers of these same streets,
subjects of their own lonely stories
now forgettable as algorithms,
broke codes that used to commute
in packs, hunter gatherers
heading into the sunrise chatting,
now silent, autonomous, floating
like a disconnected signal? And how
do we hear our children in the night
calling, but tomorrow all the same
just ride them silently to work?
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Ryan McCarty: “I keep thinking about this story about a lot full of autonomous vehicles that ‘get confused’ at night and start wandering around beeping at each other. It immediately seemed like they were scared or lonely or just kind of riled up, exactly like we might be when left alone on those dark nights when a little of that other kind of darkness starts to creep in. And it made me wonder what we’re making or, for that matter, what we’ve already made.” (web)

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August 17, 2024

“Vanilla Cake” by Ruby HartmanPosted by

Ruby Hartman (age 9)

VANILLA CAKE

Vanilla cake gone
      in a day
            because of
                  giant family.
                        From gobbling, chewing
                              to devouring
                                    then wolfing
                                          down
                                                the taste of
                                                      acceptance
                                                            after
                                                                  the grab.
 

—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Ruby Hartman: “It is an easier way to express myself. And there aren’t many rules, which means I’m free to say what I want without worrying about mistakes!”

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August 16, 2024

“Baptized” by Danielle JonesPosted by

Danielle Jones

BAPTIZED

When he eased me into the river
I was supposed to feel God coming clean in me
but all I could see was the black kitten, scrawny
when its mama went off and left it, flies
in its eyes, and daddy saying the best thing to do
was put it out of its misery, so I named it
Mercy, while he held it under water—his hand
a stone, so big I couldn’t see its struggle, 
but could feel it, same way I always feel 
the wounded or afraid—soon as I walk in a room, 
we’re family—flight of swallows, storm 
of fish, bubbles rising from their mouths, 
a stream in the water, the kitten’s last breath, 
and mine, as he pulls me up—his hand, a hook
between my shoulder blades, and he calls me
by my baptized name, but the drowning in my blood 
has already named me something else.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024

__________

Danielle Jones: “When I found the book—its corner torn, its red cover creased—my sister was gone. I held the poetry anthology because she was no longer there to hold me, tell stories, or sing me to sleep. I gobbled up the words left behind (not much else for a child to eat in that house of grief). I dined on Dickinson, Cummings, Dunn, Sexton and Orr, Frost, Clifton, Rich, Keats. Their poems filled the bowl inside me.”

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August 15, 2024

“Triolet for Carol” by John L. StanizziPosted by

John L. Stanizzi

TRIOLET FOR CAROL

So many things that still feel new
are old, and that’s the way it goes.
This is what always happens to
so many things that still feel new.

I think of how I have loved you
all these years, and that just shows
so many things that still feel new
feel new because of the life we chose.

—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems

__________

John L. Stanizzi: “The poem is from a manuscript in progress called Hallelujah Time! based on the albums of Bob Marley—specifically Burnin’, Exodus, Confrontation, and Survival. The poems are loosely inspired by Bob’s songs, and when it’s appropriate the biblical inspiration Bob used to get to the writing of the song. The poems in the book appear in the same order as the songs on the albums. Completion of Hallelujah Time! is about two years ago. Jah Bless!”

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August 14, 2024

“In the House of God” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

Doubt—dirt—blood—there is no bliss in the house of God.
How do you keep your shit together? You piss in the house of God.
 
He walks and does not walk. To hear him, not ears but fear.
To see? Wear fire. Bullet and ballad kiss in the house of God.
 
A million arrows we shot from here—
each one missed in the House of God.
 
Unaware Eve danced in the garden before
a serpent hissed in the house of God.
 
Culted and sculpted, I left a temple in tears and scars.
No one reached forth—such abyss in the house of God.
 
Communist heart—why weep in vain, in vanity for the lost?
Everyone else’s prayers too are dismissed in the house of God.
 
Begins like a joke but ends in guns—three men walk
—an American, a Nazi, a Swiss—in the house of God.
 
Apsaras, smoke, mirrors, rivers of alcohol, battle-soaked
axes, dirty underwear—all of this in the house of God?
 
Your farewell: Shannan, I’ll meet you beyond all that is right
or wrong. Beloved, betrayer, I await our tryst in the house of God.
 

—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal

__________

Shannan Mann: “Karan Kapoor introduced me to the form of the ghazal by sending me his most-favorite Agha Shahid Ali poem, ‘After You,’ which is a short, explosive ghazal. I immediately took to the form and started practicing it. Not much later I found I was working toward a book of ghazals which is now near complete. I am happy the form is still thriving, even in a ‘foreign’ language.” (web)

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August 13, 2024

“Midas on the Beach” by John Philip JohnsonPosted by

John Philip Johnson

MIDAS ON THE BEACH

When Midas went to the beach
everyone in his kingdom was nervous.
They liked the foot-shaped patches of golden sand,
scooped up like cattle patties,
and they were used to the nimble ruckus
of the entourage, staying somewhat close
but avoiding the bump. Their fear was for the sea,
for his first step, for the yellow muck hardening
around his ankles like it did in his brief Saturday night baths.
They would rescue him, of course, if the water trapped his feet—
throw him chains which they would later add to the treasury
once he’d grabbed them and been dragged
over the sharp, concreted waves.
It was a matter of some speculation for them,
but as he stared across the water,
their anxiety rose, and they muttered
about the loss of the fishing industry,
imagining the blue sea becoming gold.

It was the philosopher’s punishment, anyway:
He’d been estranged with his daughter
long before he’d hugged her to death. Like everything
else in his kingdom, she’d become an object
of evaluation. Even the words he used to describe things
were like little boxes of confinement, little rocks
he threw at the moon, separating him further,
bringing him pieces, lodestones. And the guilt
of his isolation—he’d sworn off concubines,
it was that look in their far-off eyes, the crackling realization
reaching their minds that they’d been bought,
while he caressed the distant, perfect object in his hands.

He went often to the beach and stared like other people do
at the meditation before him.
The sun’s long dangling finger across the water,
the honeyed line, shimmering like a zipper
on what he was coming to understand about it:
one conclusion, or another, here a god, there a god,
everywhere a god-god—he was aloofness itself,
and by that held the upper hand, the sponge,
squeezing it while soapy runs splattered
into gold chaos on the gray rocks; the servants
scrambled, able but wary, picking up his treasured flotsam.

Age made it worse. Aloha girls waved,
ever receding, their swaying hips
making the horizon like the hem of a grass skirt.
At least there was the gold. And he was the king,
king of the homunculus, giver of sciences,
wolfing down salad leaves before they lodged
in the back of his throat, cutting off fingernails,
letting them fall with a shrill clatter
onto the smooth golden floor which mirrored his feet.
He would cough, and wonder if his spray of golden spittle
would ignite the air into golden brightness
and make him fall with the last tinkling music
into the consummated, unabdicated otherness.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

__________

John Philip Johnson: “One afternoon, a long time ago, before you were born, I was reading Byron. I couldn’t believe it when, in Don Juan, I found him rhyme gunnery with nunnery. I thought, good grief, anybody can do this. I wrote reams of poetry, lost most of it, and published some. Recently I woke up in middle age, with the children (cinque bambini!) finally able to dress and feed themselves. So, I’ve been scribbling again, a lot, and editing this time, like a born English major.” (web)

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