Prompt: Write a poem from the perspective of one of your childhood toys.
Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier: “The twirling between the doll and the speaker in Nancy’s poem invites us to get lost in the ruffles of regret. At once exploring our need to cherish and to be cherished, as well as to love and to be loved, the honesty in this poem unboxes a trove of emotion.”
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)
“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.”
Stephen Cohen: “I am a writer and a performing, recording, and visual artist. I write poetry because it is one of the best ways for us human beings to express our thoughts and feelings. ‘The Closing List’ directly addresses life in these historic times.” (web)
John L. Stanizzi: “It occurred to me that generations upon generations have been ‘practicing’ in one way or another for some terrible ‘thing.’ We have been rehearsing so that we will know just what to do when the unthinkable happens. This is the myth around which my poem swirls.” (website)
Alison Townsend: “‘Burritos in Wisconsin, is part of a series of poems I’m writing about my late brother, who died of kidney failure at age sixty-four in 2019. A doctor himself, he was a model of grace and courage, and had one of the longest lasting kidney transplants in the world. The poem arose from various memories (especially about cooking) of the times he visited me in Wisconsin. Siblings can, I think, become homes for one another in adulthood. The poem articulates my hope that I was that for him, while bearing witness to the difficulty and loneliness of his passing. Grief crystallizes things. This is one of the few poems I’ve ever written that came nearly whole, as if dictated.”
“You Don’t Have to Choose” by Beth CopelandPosted by Rattle
Image: “A Lonesome Border” by Carmella Dolmer. “You Don’t Have to Choose” was written by Beth Copeland for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2023, and selected as an Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
__________
Beth Copeland
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE
Between the cube and the circle,
the container or the eddying drain,
the cardboard box or the manhole,
the collapsing star or the burning house,
the fiery floor or the raspberry arch that becomes a rainbow
after a thunder storm,
the missing door or the haloed saints that hover
in the Tuscan afterglow,
the embodied self or the shadow
holding your hand,
the green selvage of the world
where everything grows—grass, kudzu, weeping willows,
Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the way this poem begins as a literal, generalized description of Carmella Dolmer’s piece—‘the cube and the circle’—and then progressively becomes more abstract and metaphorical—‘the haloed saints that hover,’ ‘the waterless well.’ Like the artwork, whose rich simplicity hints at more complex truths, ‘You Don’t Have to Choose’ seems to suggest that the cube and the circle are archetypal here, and the poet vividly and imaginatively explores this symbolism. The last stanza completely detaches from the imagistic nature of the rest of the poem to deliver objective statements, and the creative whiplash of this transition, combined with the undiluted truth of the statements themselves, renders the ending affecting and meaningful.”
