A RIVER OF SOUNDS
What is more opposite to music?
The silence … The dead silence.
—Volodymyr Zelensky
—from Poets Respond
April 10, 2022
__________
Ayokunle Samuel Betiku: “Volodymyr Zelensky’s Grammys speech on ‘sound’ struck a chord.”

A RIVER OF SOUNDS
What is more opposite to music?
The silence … The dead silence.
—Volodymyr Zelensky
—from Poets Respond
April 10, 2022
__________
Ayokunle Samuel Betiku: “Volodymyr Zelensky’s Grammys speech on ‘sound’ struck a chord.”
FENG SHUI
—from Rattle #22, Winter 2004
__________
Tara Gorvine: “Even when my days are all very much alike—work, make dinner, pay the bills—if I write, then there’s always something new.”
UNBORN
—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
__________
Jessica Barlevi: “I write poetry because Emily Dickinson saved me. I was in an unhealthy marriage, home with three young children, and I was depressed. I used to write out lines of Dickinson’s poems on sticky notes and post them around the house. I looked at them every day, many times a day. Poetry is what got me through each day. I hope one day my poetry can save someone.” (web)
HER FATHER TALKS TO HER ABOUT SEX
—from Imago, Dei
2021 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
__________
Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose: “I grew up in the Church, and by that I mean in a fundamentalist, evangelical home where we spent Sunday dinners debating things like the meaning of the Greek word ‘Baptismo,’ whether it meant you had to be fully immersed or whether a sprinkling was sufficient to keep you from the gates of hell. Because Jesus was ‘the word,’ and because I spent so much of my youth analyzing the ‘good word,’ it’s fitting that I wound up pursuing a degree in English and becoming a writer. Ironically, the close-reading skills the church taught me was what ultimately undid my faith. Thank God.” (web)
WHAT I REMEMBER ABOUT THAT DRESS
—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
Tribute to Librarians
__________
Norma Bernstock: “I became a school librarian after teaching middle school for eight years and mostly loved those days when I would take my students to the library and get them excited about all the new books. I worked in various school libraries for 26 years of my 34-year career in public education and knew it was time to switch careers when I’d make the students wait in the hall until I sat at my computer and typed in the poem I’d been composing in my head on the way to school!”
THE ACTION STAR UNSCRIPTED
for Bruce Willis
—from Poets Respond
April 5, 2022
__________
Jocko Benoit: “I’ve been a fan of Bruce Willis ever since his Moonlighting days. For a guy people say is a star but not an actor, he has managed to be in several very good movies. Rather than take a downbeat view of his aphasia diagnosis, I wanted to imagine a near future where he would discover all the other ‘languages’ that he can still comprehend.” (web)
A PRAYER
after Francisco X. Alarcón
—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
__________
Porsha Monique Allen: “Growing up in church I always wondered what it would be like if God were imperfect. So when I came across Francisco X. Alarcón’s poem, I saw it as a chance to explore the possibility of an imperfect God. I loved the idea of the roles being reversed. What if God looked to us for mercy? What if God wasn’t all-knowing? How would that influence the way we see God?” (web)