November 19, 2023

“In Today’s Fantasy: Trees, Poems, and Sex” by Francesca MoroneyPosted by

Francesca Moroney

IN TODAY’S FANTASY: TREES, POEMS, AND SEX

Before you died, you promised me
a book of poetry. It was the day
 
we planted the maple. We sprawled
in the dirt beside our newest sapling.
 
You asked what I wanted for
my birthday. A pair of wooly socks?
 
Vial of sandalwood oil?
Tube of rose-scented cream?
 
I watched you smile, waiting
for me to decide. On the street
 
over your left shoulder, passing cars,
a dog and its human, pollen
 
painting everything green.
Perhaps some sonnets?
 
I grew warm, anticipating
thinly-veiled eroticism
 
oozing from each sestet. Oh!
Free verse! I declared, excited now,
 
wanting poems a bit subversive,
poems as unafraid as you and I,
 
poems loud enough to declare
our most basic desires: fuck, cum,
 
on your knees. What is it that I miss
the most? The feel of your mouth
 
moving over me while I
read Neruda to you beneath
 
the duvet? Or the way we loved
to lie beneath the trees?
 
In today’s fantasy, you have lived
long enough for us to lounge
 
again in the yard. You teach me
Cornus florida and Aesculu pavia.
 
We have already identified
Acer palmatum, with leaves
 
so red I sometimes tremble
in the presence of all that heat.
 
In today’s fantasy, we unwrap
the book you have given me,
 
and then we take the poems
to bed. We tear them
 
with our teeth. We suck
each stanza and caesura
 
until the poems glow
rich and red, as fierce
 
and fiery as the bloom
of Japanese maple.
 
In today’s fantasy, you and I
are the leaves blazing through
 
this late autumnal light,
moments before we fall.
 

—from Poets Respond
November 19, 2023

__________

Francesca Moroney: “Kenya’s plan to plant 100 million trees strikes me as an act of both great optimism and great mourning. The fact that our earth is in such dire need of replenishment merely underscores the extent of all that has been stripped from it. Sometimes it feels like that on a personal level, as well. No matter how much we plant, we will never find a way to compensate for all that has been lost. ” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 18, 2023

“Pasteurization” by Michael MeyerhoferPosted by

Michael Meyerhofer

PASTEURIZATION

Poetry keeps wine and milk from spoiling
and has prevented countless deaths
since its invention in 1892. It works

by heating substances to just a bit
below the boiling point—not enough
to curdle but still hot enough to kill off

most of the bacteria that can hurt you.
Some health nuts blame poetry for disease,
saying a natural vocabulary is better,

though modern doctors disagree.
Other foods saved by poetry include juice,
syrup, vinegar, and canned foods.

Poetry was invented by Louis Pasteur
who lost three children to typhoid.
While working on a vaccine for rabies,

he once impressed onlookers
by extracting saliva from a crazed dog
without armoring his hands.

He also made a vaccine for anthrax
though some accuse him of plagiarism.
The poetry process involves lots

of pipes and vats and rapid cooling.
Poetry doesn’t seem all that complicated
to us, more like common sense,

but our ancestors didn’t have it
which is why so many of them died,
young and beautiful and always afraid.

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012

__________

Michael Meyerhofer: “The first time I read the poems in What the Living Do by Marie Howe, I was so blown away that I said something like ‘Holy shit…’ after pretty much every one. This was followed, naturally, by a desire to share those poems with everyone—and to try and pull off the same miracle, if humanly possible. There’s a lot to be said for making somebody so stunned (hopefully in a good way) by something as seemingly innocuous as writing that all they can do is raise their eyebrows and swear like a sailor.” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 17, 2023

“My Dad Loves the Smell of Asphalt” by Lisa SticePosted by

Lisa Stice

MY DAD LOVES THE SMELL OF ASPHALT

He’d work in the summer with steam
rising from new roads, climbing up 
and down from loaders and scrapers,
fixing whatever needed fixing then
 
he’d come home to us smelling of
oil with his arms dirty, clean up to his
t-shirt sleeves, and he’d wash with
green Lava soap in the utility sink,
 
gray water swirling down the drain—
his nightly ritual before dinner and
TV and sometimes he’d fall asleep
on the couch, his snores so loud we’d
 
have to nudge him to be able to hear
the sitcom, and he always went to bed
far earlier than us anyway because he
would be gone again before we woke.
 
 
 

Prompt: “From The Daily Poet by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano (Two Sylvias Press, 2013): April 13—‘In honor of Seamus Heaney’s birthday … write a poem about your native land … focus on details about … what your parents and/or grandparents did for a living.’”

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems

__________

Lisa Stice: “There are 365 prompts in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano (Two Sylvias Press, 2013), and I have actually revisited the book several times, and so written two or three different poems per prompt. It’s a lot of fun!” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 16, 2023

“Almost” by Mark JarmanPosted by

Mark Jarman

ALMOST

Almost grasped what Grandmother Grace knew
Last Sunday sitting in church, almost knew
What Alexander Campbell grasped when, confronted
With the desolate orphan, he told her, “You
Are a child of God. Go claim your inheritance.”
Almost got it. There it was in the sunlight,
Squared in the clear glass windows, on the durable leaves
Of the magnolia outside. Almost grasped the weather
That turns clear and crystallized in Hans Küng’s brain.
Almost held it in the ellipses and measure
Of my almost understanding. I see the moment
There in my notebook, then the next day’s anxiety
Spilling like something wet across the ink.
I almost put in my hand a vast acceptance
And almost blessed myself, then it slipped away.
All that colossal animal vivacity—smoke
Of the distant horizon, most of it, haze.
But to have known in any place or time
What they knew is worth a record, a few notes.
Almost knew what they knew. Almost got it.
 

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006

__________

Mark Jarman: “It took me years to figure out that one of the biggest influences on me as a writer had been the fact that I lived in a house with someone who had to write something every week, get up in front of bunch of people, and basically perform it. It was my father writing sermons.” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 15, 2023

“The Children I’ll Never Have Make an Appearance” by Andrew Shattuck McBridePosted by

Andrew Shattuck McBride

THE CHILDREN I’LL NEVER HAVE MAKE AN APPEARANCE

It’s a quiet Sunday morning. I’m alone,
startled to see a female figure, hear her exclaim,
 
He sees us, he feels us. I knew he would, eventually! 
She looks over her shoulder briefly. Involuntarily,
 
I look past her, say, Who are you? What are you doing here? 
She turns back to me. Hello, Father. I’ve missed you.
 
Then, a male voice, What did I tell you, Sis?
All attitude. He looks at me and says, Yo, Pops,
 
heads for the kitchen. What’s in the fridge?
Got any beer? I’m aghast. No, I don’t have any beer.
 
Hey, you’re too young to drink beer!
He says, You’re right, pauses for effect.
 
Some of this coffee liqueur will do.
At my alarm, he adds, Just kidding, Pops.
 
His smile flashes. I recognize it immediately.
The daughter I’ll never have is laughing, quietly.
 
Her laughter charms me. I notice their ease
with each other. Camaraderie, unforced.
 
No estrangement. They are close
enough in age to be peers.
 
“Pops” sets me on edge. I’m not too happy
with “Father,” either. My urge, to seek control. 
 
First things first: call me ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy,’ 
not ‘Father’ and definitely not ‘Pops.’
 
The son I’ll never have tries it out. Dad, he murmurs.
The daughter I’ll never have tries it out, too. OK, Daddy.
 
I soften momentarily, but have to be a hard-ass.
That’s better. You still haven’t answered my question. 
 
What are you doing here? The son I’ll never have
speaks up; I see now that he’s older.
 
Well, Dad, we’re family. I mean, where else would we be?
For a moment, I’m speechless. I finally recognize them.
 
They are the children I’ll never have.
They have been here with me all along.
 

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

__________

Andrew Shattuck McBride: “I write poetry to help me figure things out, to understand how I’m feeling. The love of poetry was beaten out of me pretty much before I left for college. I never dreamed I’d write any poetry. In 2009, I was struggling to write an essay; it wasn’t crystalizing. I realized that my drafts contained poetic elements, so I recast the essay as a poem. The poem was much more successful, and I was hooked.”

Rattle Logo

November 14, 2023

“Love of Distance” by Prartho SerenoPosted by

Prartho Sereno

LOVE OF DISTANCE

He’s enchanted with the idea
of reaching through space,
wants me to wait by the window
while he climbs the far-off mountain,
sets up the light, flashes something back
in Morse code. He says we should begin
studying our dots and dashes, along with
smoke signals, the extravagantly long rolled r’s
of Spanish. Hand gestures of the deaf.
 

Or we could take the rim trail,
one of us staying on the southern lip
while the other heads north till our bodies
shrink to the size of tree-frogs. Then we can converse
across the canyon without effort, no need
to raise our voices. He is certain this will work,
that the atmosphere at these heights
will bear our words with a clarity
as yet unknown to us.
 
My faith in these things is weaker.
I dare not tell him the Far Eastern stories—
the one where the poet builds two houses
on opposite shores of the lake. Gives one
to his sweetheart, who he tells to go in,
take up dulcimer or needlework, learn to love
the lonely ways. Think of the surprise,
he says. One of our faces suddenly shining
between the black birds and reeds.
 

—from Rattle #27, Summer 2007

__________

Prartho Sereno: “When I first read that so much depended on a red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens, I breathed a sigh of relief. My inner whisperer seemed to know this kind of thing, but I had always felt her murmurings to be of no use. Now I could scramble through an odd labyrinth of life-hoops—psychologist, cab driver, head cook, single parent, housecleaner, palmist, phys. ed teacher, Poet in the Schools—with someone I could trust inside. She’s the one who writes my poems.” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 13, 2023

“Ars Ecphrastica” by Matthew Buckley SmithPosted by

Matthew Buckley Smith

ARS ECPHRASTICA

for C.

Although your fingers and my eyes agree,
It is unheard of, Cameron, what you see—
 
Describing scenes of color, form, and light
Which you perceive by any means but sight.
 
We cannot know the god’s unheard-of head,
Protested Rilke, when he should have said
 
Unseen, because we hear of it from him
In carnal terms, becoming of a hymn
 
To any of those bad old gods, the kind
That loved man’s form but not his living mind,
 
Delighting in some tyrant’s blinding wrath,
Then disappearing in the aftermath.
 
 
 

Prompt: “I wrote this in response to one of two suggestions made to my writing group. I had been reading a lot of Horace, and at two different sessions I brought up the idea of imitating something he did in his odes. In one, I proposed that we each write a poem that argues with an existing poem. In another, I proposed that we each write a poem addressed to a friend. I cannot remember which prompt inspired this poem.”

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems

__________

Matthew Buckley Smith: “Every week, I meet for an hour by Zoom with two women I got to know through a poetry anthology we were all in. One of us supplies a prompt, and then we write for an hour in response. Sometimes the prompt is an image. Sometimes it’s a line from a book we’re reading. Sometimes it’s an idea drawn from an existing poem. I save the results of my efforts in a file that I examine some months later. Roughly one draft in ten is worth revising.” (web)

Rattle Logo