November 24, 2022

Take Heart by 
Bonnie Riedinger, abstract watercolor painting of two figures above pine trees

Image: “Ballet Above the Bay” by René Bohnen. “Fault Lines” was written by Margaret Malochleb for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2022, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

__________

Margaret Malochleb

FAULT LINES

To negotiate the terrain
of devotion’s darker
questions, we set out
in search of knowledge
buried inside the mountain.
Together we climbed
the treacherous path
littered with thistle,
bindweed, cheatgrass.
Held out our hands
to pull each other up
to the next outcropping.
And as we tended
our hunger, our thirst,
our need for rest,
the mountain watched,
held its breath
and waited for us
to look down and see
that the unwritten history
inside every living thing
is a borderless boundary
that can never be breached.
 

from Ekphrastic Challenge
October 2022, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, René Bohnen: “I had quite a job selecting a shortlist from the shortlist and eventually my favourite. In many of the poems I found beautiful imagery, as well as poignant moments and situations. I let the spirit and definitions of ekphrastic verse guide me in my final decision. I chose ‘Fault Lines’ as the poem which in my opinion amplifies and expands a core idea. The poet has cleverly used the different meanings of a geological concept to develop parallel perceptions in the reader’s mind. The poem becomes much more than mere description of the picture provided. Oxford Dictionaries offers this definition of fault lines: 1) a place where there is a long break in the rock that forms the surface of the earth and where earthquakes are more likely to happen, and 2) an issue that people disagree about and may, as a result, lead to conflict. Already in the first stanza we find the darker questions of devotion linked to the quest of going inside a mountain. Geology and emotional danger in association or perhaps juxtaposition, the reader has to read to find out. Judging technically, I enjoyed the sound effects in the poem. Without becoming clumsy or heavy, the little echoes, assonance and alliteration drive the action along. A line such as ‘littered with thistle’ tickles the mind’s eye and the poetic ear. In the last stanza, the b-alliteration (‘borderless boundary that can never be breached’) emphasises the profound wisdom that is presented as the poem’s closing viewpoint. Details and specifics anchor the narrative (‘bindweed, cheatgrass’) while also alluding to unpleasant situations or events between two people. The couple is hungry and thirsty, they pull each other up. They negotiate out croppings. This is no vague journey. The last stanza returns to the ‘mountain’ that appeared in stanza 1. The arching that is thus created echoes the shape of the arms in the artwork. The emotion of dismay, surprise, horror or despair that may be implied by the artwork, is subtly prompted by the openendedness of the last stanza, when the mountain waits for realization to dawn on the two tired people. I can write much more on this poem, but will leave the other readers the opportunity to analyse and enjoy an intricate poem that reads so effortlessly, one is initially mislead to think that it is simple.”

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December 22, 2021

David Mason

A PESTILENCE

At night a needle of sound nears my ear,
waved off by a drowsy hand, yet the whine
had a winged and long-legged body I see
this morning, afloat above my coffee cup.
Still here, still living, my little enemy?

I’ve made the journey to another year,
another island where such creatures are
in all their hunger, poised upon a nerve,
their being honed into the sharpest spike.
They too are dodging danger in the night.

from Rattle #73, Fall 2021

__________

David Mason: “Though Tasmania is famous for poisonous spiders and snakes, we’re not really bothered by such things. It was the more common pest, the mosquito, that was bugging me when I wrote this poem. I had just escaped lockdown in the U.S. and come home to Tasmania, narrowly avoiding hotel quarantine, and the word ‘pestilence’ was in the air. So was this rather persistent mosquito. I began to think that he and I were locked in the same struggle, the same relationship, and I had no desire to donate blood to his cause. But we do live in relation to everything, don’t we?—even the things we would sometimes like to avoid.”

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March 9, 2024

Gary Lemons

END GAME

1.
 
In the beginning the earth was alone.
It had no language. Did not speak. Nothing
Disturbed the blue work of its dreaming.
 
It dreamed blood. Not just water.
Not just a salt filled basin of rain. Something
Momentary. Unable to feel anything
But the desperate ripple of its own stone.
 
Blood demanded blood. Killed to get it.
Dripped from the ceiling in the room
Where earth dreamed of rivers.
 
Let there be an end to lights rising
From windows, the smoke of machines, the
Crash of stricken roses as they fall.
An end to the cadence of hearts, an end
To bird songs. Let there be
An end to mothering the already dead.
 
The dream is over. Earth is awake.
 
 
2. Snake
 
Snake comes down the mountain with a ghost
In its mouth. Ghost feels no pain pierced by fangs.
Tells snake nothing is left alive. Only snake.
Snake don’t care. Snake eats what’s left.
 
When nothing’s left snake likes himself for a meal.
Snake hunt in trees for earth’s early dreams.
 
Snake find ’em and pop ’em in his mouth.
Eat a dream before it finds a dreamer.
That way snake rules in a world without light.
 
 
3. Snake Dreams
 
Snake dreams of water. Seeing
Babies strung with seaweed floating
Effortlessly toward the sun.
Snake is alone with a truth
Worn so thin it has no sides.
A dreaming snake makes no sound,
Leaves no trail, weighs less than air,
Can’t be heard, seen or felt by earth.
 
Snake is the last living thing. Earth hunts
Snake. Snake dreams and can’t be found.
 
When snake is sufficiently invisible
He will awaken and the clock begins
Ticking toward the time earth will
Feel the faint slither of the last blood
Filled tube moving on its skin. Earth
Sensing, snake sensing.
 
Before then snake will eat himself.
Snake will become the distance
Between inescapable beginnings
And inevitable conclusions expressed
By the dying sun over quiet water.
 
Snake will surface in the pink light
Surrounded by pale children whose
Hands are filled with bones that once
Were inside their bodies.
 
 
4. Snake in the Grass
 
Sure snake like a good slither in wet grass
But only if the grass is wet with blood.
Ghosts don’t bleed so snake don’t like ’em.
 
There are billions of ghosts, dandelion puffs
Singing as they fly, screaming when they land.
But snake moves through snowstorms
Of souls knowing his hunger is punishment
For worshiping god one bite at a time.
 
With snake gone the earth would be alone.
Out of compassion snake remains alive.
 
For now snake slithers through a field
Of ghosts looking for vestiges of god to eat.
 
Snake thinks and chews old leaves—thinks,
No, these are only leaves, only old leaves.
 
 
5. Snake Eyes
 
Snake has no eyes. Don’t need to see.
Ain’t nothing to see in the entire world
But snake hisself and snake done seen hisself
In the face of things he ate alive, seen
Hisself in the pool of liquid that came out
Of them when snake squeeze ’em good.
 
Now snake be blind. Sharpen his other senses.
Knows when to freeze, knows the voice
Of every dead soul hanging in the air,
Knows especially when earth has felt him.
Knows then to dream his self away,
Leave behind his skin for earth to mince
While snake drifts through possible doors
Of awakening, not seeing, just knowing
When it’s safe to be reborn.
 
Why do snake pursue another snake to be?
Why not give it up, go be dead? Stop hungering.
Be a ghost like all the rest. Be easy.
Just hold still. Let earth come. Let earth
Rise. Feel the ground tremble. Feel his belly
Sawed open by stones and dirt slide in.
Feel earth inside and no longer be snake.
 
Haw. Haw. That funny. Snake can’t die.
Snake must live so not another world begins.
 

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

__________

Gary Lemons: “It’s almost a cliché to speak of poetry as a transformational process by which the poet begins, through the writing of the poem, the sacred work of becoming a better human being. I believe this. Each poem is a gift much like each prayer is a lesson. What matters to me is the tissue-deep shift I feel each time the words come out in that spare and clean way that tells me I have spoken as truthfully as I can in my own voice. The poem as it is written becomes my window as well as my mirror. I am grateful for this every day.”

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February 16, 2022

Leticia Priebe Rocha

I HATE IKEA

Maybe because my mom and I always fight
over the indecipherable instructions and missing screws, the
hammers meeting fingers that give way to fuck-shit-fuck
God-it-would-be-so-much-easier-if-there-was-a-man-in-the-house.

Maybe it’s the fact that IKEA uses 1% of the world’s lumber,
exploits laborers in the global south, was founded by a Nazi,
and the sheer impossibility of living ethically—living at all—under
capitalist imperialism threatens to drown me every second.

Maybe it’s the memory of our first big furniture shopping trip,
or, more accurately, its disruption. We could finally afford
a couch, dressers, and bed frames after two years in this country,
the four of us happily stuffed inside our paint-chipped

2000 Toyota Camry, windows down in the sweltering Miami
heat because the AC never worked. The clashing yellow and blue
logo had just come into sight when the sound I heard in my
nightmares blasted behind us, the sickening woop-woop

of a police car. See, at the age of 10 I had memorized the date
my father’s license would expire, the seconds ticking down
to when the unspeakable would be possible. It was 4 months past
that date, and as an 11-year-old I faced my father’s imminent

deportation in the now-infinite distance between us and the IKEA
parking lot one stoplight ahead. Hiccupping sobs erupted in my chest,
eliciting panicked wails from my then-baby sister. My mother turned
to hold our hands, her own tears spilling over as she fearfully eyed

the two officers advancing with relish, slowly closing in
on their latest prey. My father remained stony-faced, lowered the front
windows and his head. License and registration please, said the one
next to my dad’s window. The other on my mother’s side frowned

into the spectacle of tears, barking out:
Why are you all crying?
Stop. Why are you crying?
Why do you keep crying?

Maybe it’s because we couldn’t
find the right colored dressers and
our couch was delivered 2 weeks later
with a gaping hole on the side.

from Rattle #74, Winter 2021

__________

Leticia Priebe Rocha: “My affinity with writing emerged as poetry became the only way I could truly untangle my experience as a highly politicized being in this country and move towards understanding the world. My greatest hope is that my work can help others fulfill the same impulse.” (web)

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August 26, 2023

Jaylee Marchese (age 15)

FUNERAL

You’re a carefree, bouncy kid
who still enjoys the little things like
the sticky summer season every year
and riding horses and fishing
at the old docks past sunset.
 
Every year, your family goes on vacations
and you genuinely enjoy every second of them.
Your parents go on date nights now and then,
they hold hands in the front seat of your Yukon,
and your family feels undoubtedly like it’s yours.
 
Then, you notice things start changing.
Family game nights dissolve into nothing—
the Monopoly board is stowed in the
hallway closet like it’s unthinkable.
You’re sure that family movie nights only existed in your head.
 
The nights get longer and longer because
the yelling and arguing through
paper-thin walls put a pit in your stomach that fuels insomnia.
Most of your heart-wrenching summer nights are spent
staring at the ceiling, the clock flashing 1:00.
 
It’s painted the color of pessimism.
You spend those pitiful mornings afterward
explaining to your impertinent brothers that
it was nothing—just mangy conversation.
You wonder how this became your job.
 
The pancakes taste like an enigma.
The tension at your breakfast table is so thick,
you could cut it with a knife and the
hard truth that your parents’ marriage is
in shambles would come spilling out of it.
 
Your parents can barely stand the insanity anymore, and neither can you.
For an hour before, you’re hiding in the hallway bathroom,
shaking, because every part of you knows it would always
come down to this—an unassuming Sunday evening.
You tread on eggshells to the corridor.
 
They sit you down in your congested living room,
the fear clinging to you like sweat. The air is
stiff and unbreathable here because the truth is lingering in the corner of the room,
like a ghost, watching your skin turn pale
and your words slur into liquid.
 
You’re holding onto the tattered sofa for dear life,
your fingernails making deep impressions in the leather,
because you feel like your house is only seconds away
from being completely engulfed in flames.
Your impatience is a lump in your throat.
 
With soft voices, they tell you the things that you already
know, but hearing them out loud and from their own
mouths breaks your heart tenfold.
“Nothing is really going to change, Darling.”
“Everything will.”
 
Seven p.m. on a Sunday afternoon turns into
a teary-eyed teenager, belittled into a sobbing puddle
on the hardwood. Your brother says that you’ve
traded the chaos for the quiet.
You wonder why there couldn’t have been an in-between.
 
You don’t quite remember the next few months, just that
they’re dreary and you’re completely distant
from yourself. You’re going through the motions, while
the consciousness of yourself hides under the bed,
its eyes shut tight like it’s watching a horror movie.
 
At some point, you move half of
yourself into your grandparents’ house.
You paint the walls with the fever that won’t break,
and set the desire you have to
deteriorate on the bedside table, like a houseplant.
 
You make a point to never call this place
home because it can’t be farther from it. Really,
your heart belongs somewhere situated between two forever-moving
people, whose favorite game becomes
tug-of-war with the way you feel.
 
Dinner eventually turns into three-hour therapy
sessions. Family feels more like a game of house that you’re
stuck playing. The same mantra you’ve attempted to live by,
“Nothing’s really going to change, Darling …” is
beaten to a pulp and tossed in the trashcan with leftover dinner.
 
The next few years go by in what feels like
a montage. You’re watching yourself grow up in blinks, trying to
compensate for the sudden loss of childhood.
You feel like you’re still
grieving every part of yourself.
 
You think you deserved a funeral after that day in August,
and you never got one.
There’s an empty grave somewhere with your name on it,
and you’re stuck carrying around the
skeleton that belongs in it.
 
Your parents try their hardest,
but neither of them is around as much anymore. It
becomes your responsibility to raise your brothers and
it becomes your responsibility to raise yourself.
You overwhelm and you break yourself in the process, but
 
you aren’t allowed to cry because everyone
around you needs you to be completely solid.
You feel like you’re holding onto the kid you used to be
while everyone already sees you as
an adult—like you grew up the day everything ended.
 
You feel like you’re splitting down the middle trying
to make yourself belong to two people
who couldn’t get farther apart. With time, you realize
that the insanity was never really put to rest. It was only diluted,
like water on a grease fire.
 
You’re a mother.
You’re a sister.
You’re a teacher.
You’re a role model.
All the while, you’re a kid.
 

from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Jaylee Marchese: “I write poetry because it feels natural.”

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April 26, 2022

Amy Miller

THE NEW SUPERSTITIONS

When the movie starts, cross yourself
for all the nights and weekends
lost by the long lists of workers, for the ones
who got sick and quit the business, who blew
all their money on shrinks, for the one
who got beaned by an ashtray thrown
by the petulant star.

Walking by a playground, throw bark
over your left shoulder as you watch
the little boy tease the girl, the budding man
inside him rising like a fist.

Wear your lucky slob clothing while you watch
the movie of the man playing a slob, his sideways
sneer like your own while you crash daily
into the obstacles of love and faith, while you try
to balance a coffee in one hand and your childish
expectations in the other, while holding
in the fold of your belly a fear of being made a fool,
of loving a photo of someone or maybe an actual body
living right there with you, who has always set off
your alarms but you choose to think they’re only
your own irrational blood pounding
in your ears for no real reason.

On the sidewalk, step over every doubt. You have
no room for them. You are busy and you want
to like what you like and go to bed without
a nagging thought that burrows in and wakes up
your body at 2 a.m., whirring in the dark.

Do not walk under the ladder of your friendly
neighbor, who has always been too friendly and
damn it, you don’t want to think that, you want to be
stoned on kindness like a yoga teacher, but you also
have caught him looking down from his upstairs window
late at night while you’re bringing in the trash can and
damn it, that’s never felt right.

If you break your car’s side mirror you’ll get seven years
of some guy watching you eat lunch as you sit in the safety
of your ’67 Cougar before you realize his face hasn’t moved
from his mirror and he’s watching you steadily, sitting
in his car in the next row in the lot, bouncing you off
a 45-degree angle and making some motion you see
just enough of to know, and you start your car
and drive away nonchalantly as if you didn’t notice,
watching in your mirror to make sure he doesn’t follow.

While you watch the movie, light incense to bring you
back to yourself, to remind you that you are living here
now, that the world has always had dickheads, that you
are not sitting with one right now, and outside a frog
has started up croaking behind the hawthorn bush,
and he’s talking about sex and maybe some aggression
but you know exactly where he’s coming from,
and you’re not a frog so it’s just a song, something
that lulls you to sleep, as all lullabies are darker
and more dangerous than you once believed, but even
sleep is now something different, not entirely pure
but it has its pleasures, its emptying, its motionless beauty.

from Poets Respond
April 26, 2022

__________

Amy Miller: “I saw the news this week that Bill Murray has been fired from his current movie project due to ‘inappropriate behavior.’ The article goes on to describe decades of aggressive and violent behavior toward fellow actors, artists, and his ex-wife. Reading this brought back—as so many things do—the hypervigilance that women live with daily; you can’t live as a woman in the U.S. and not know about that. It’s exhausting to see one pop icon after another bite the dust; there seems no point in admiring anyone. Our culture of celebrity heroes is flawed at its center, engineered to break our hearts. More vigilance.” (web)

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December 21, 2021

Jean L. Kreiling

TIME IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

With half our faces covered, and six feet
from most other sources of body heat,
we navigate “new normal” in our own
germ-fearing bubbles, freakishly alone
or feigning human contact via screen,
as months of tragedy make dread routine.
Our past and future both grow vague. The counting
of days confounds us, as the death toll, mounting
obscenely, renders numbers both abstruse
and cruel, and new variants reduce
the quantity of breaths we each might take,
how many years we each might get to make
a life, a home, a work of art, a dent
in our to-do lists. We cannot invent
a kindly clock, and it’s not a surprise
when time turns blurry: it both creeps and flies,
it twists into unmeasured shapes, it flouts
the laws of physics, and threatens redoubts
of certainty and order. Has it been
six months, a year, or two since you were in
a restaurant, a plane, a concert hall?
Since you shook someone’s hand? Can you recall
when you began to forego pedicures?
Like sci-fi movies, this weird life obscures
the clock, the calendar, reality
itself, and though we are apparently
the stars of this film, we’re oblivious—
the ending certainly unknown to us,
the plot a murky, convoluted mess;
the running time is anybody’s guess.

from Poets Respond
December 21, 2021

__________

Jean L. Kreiling: “The surreal quality of pandemic life strains the brain, and recent news of spikes in infections and deaths has exacerbated the stress. While I’m grateful that Covid-19 has not affected me or my loved ones in any dire physical way, I suspect I’m not the only one who feels as if I’m living in some alien universe—some unimaginably difficult world from which I cannot escape, where time (among other things) doesn’t function properly.”

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