Poetry Is Back in the News

On average, poems in Rattle are published six months after they were submitted. Then they appear online six months after that. Real poetry is timeless, of course, so usually it doesn’t matter—but this is the age of information. News cycles rarely last more than a week, let alone a year. One reason poetry lags behind other forms of contemporary media might be this delay—how can poetry be part of the conversation when it enters so late? Moreover, poets do often respond to current events in real-time, so why make them wait for our print schedule?

Our solution is Poets Respond—a poem written within the last week about a public event that occurred within the last week will appear every Sunday. Our only criterion for selection is the quality of the poem; all opinions and reactions are welcome. Selected poets will receive $50. To have your own poem considered for next week’s posting, submit at the link below before midnight Friday PST. Any poems sent before the midnights of Sunday and Tuesday will also be considered for bonus postings mid-week.

Response Poems

	2019
	Christopher Brean Murray	W.S. Merwin (Mar. 19)
	O-Jeremiah Agbaakin	The Book of Revelation … (Mar. 17)
	Hannah Norman	Echo (Mar. 12)
	Marjorie Thomsen	Bonnie’s Final Poem to Clyde (Mar. 10)
	Rhina P. Espaillat	Out of Focus (Mar. 5)
	John Paul Davis	Elexxxion (Mar. 3)
	Alison Luterman	In Defense of Those … (Feb. 24)
	Francesca Bell	Late Mammogram (Feb. 17)
	Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe	Monsters (Feb. 12)
	Adam Szetela	Reintroduction to Poetry (Feb. 10)
	M.L. Clark	Intervention (Feb. 5)
	Elya Braden	Cold Front (Feb. 3)
	Bailey Cohen	American Sonnet in Which the Senate … (Jan. 29)
	Rob Stephens	Upon Further Review (Jan. 27)
	Alexandra Haines-Stiles	Ten Year Challenge (Jan. 22)
	Amy Schmidt	Abundance (Jan. 20)
	Sally Ashton	Listening to Mars (Jan. 15)
	Ed Wade	Think. Wait. Fast. (Jan. 13)
	Megan Fernandes	Why We Drink (Jan. 6)
	Aaron Poochigian	The Countdown (Jan. 1)
		. . .
	2018
	Rimas Uzgiris	The Ancients and Us (Dec. 30)
	Leatha Kendrick	Your Fear (Dec. 23)
	T.R. Poulson	Essays (Dec. 18)
	Gustavo Barahona-Lopez	The Note Knowing Tears (Dec. 16)
	Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer	By the Numbers (Dec. 13)
	Sarah E.N. Kohrs	Like Lichen Lingering (Dec. 9)
	Elizabeth Coyle	InSight (Dec. 2)
	J.M. Francheteau	John Hinckley Can Move Out … (Nov. 27)
	Molly Fisk	Particulate Matter (Nov. 25)
	Rolli	Free Speech Being (Nowabouts) (Nov. 20)
	A.M. Juster	The Queen Ponders Her Laureate Choice (Nov. 18)
	Caitlin Gildrien	These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends (Nov. 15)
	James D’Agostino	Poem Written in Stolen Polling Place Pen (Nov. 11)
	Christine Potter	On the Election (Nov. 6)
	Alejandro Escudé	The Migrant Caravan (Nov. 4)
	Devon Balwit	Jew (Nov. 1)
	Sam Thilén	Just Fighting (Oct. 28)
	Katharine Harer	Brett Kavanaugh Does the Dishes (Oct. 21)
	Sally O’Brien	Ghazal for Kensington (Oct. 16)
	Chera Hammons	The Moon of a Moon Is a Moonmoon (Oct. 14)
	Abby E. Murray	This Is Only a Test (Oct. 7)
	Danielle DeTiberus	An Incomplete List of Last-Minute … (Oct. 2)
	Susan Nguyen	I Want to Burn the Frat House … (Sep. 30)
	Dante Di Stefano	In a James Dickey Poem (Sep. 25)
	Bayleigh Fraser	Machines (Sep. 23)
	Matt Dube	Kavanaugh Carwash (Sep. 16)
	Seth Simons	Poem for John McCain (Sep. 9)
	Lauren Johnson	For Michael and Louis (Sep. 2)
	Esther Ra	At the Border, Late Summer (Aug. 26)
	Craig van Rooyen	Till She Appeared … (Aug. 19)
	Ruth Hoberman	Chicago Street, Rainy Day (Aug. 12)
	Amy Miller	To the Firefighters Sleeping … (Aug. 5)
	Brittany Hause	A Cocky Poem (Aug. 5)
	Craig van Rooyen	How to Swim an Elegy (July 31)
	William Evans	After His Racist Tweet … (July 29)
	Rosanne Osborne	Can the President’s Hair (July 22)
	Alida Rol	If Men Could (July 17)
	Melissa Balmain	Marooned (July 15)
	Ruth Bavetta	Heat (July 8)
	Bob Hicok	Redundancy Is Only a Problem … (July 3)
	Linda Dove	Fear Is the Day (July 1)
	Lynne Knight	In Memoriam (June 26)
	Jackleen Holton	I’m Sad with You (June 24)
	Jocko Benoit	Someone with a Megaphone (June 19)
	Hsien Min Toh	DPRK – US (June 17)
	Sonia Greenfield	Call If You Need Me (June 12)
	Alexandra Umlas	Remembering You, Anthony Bourdain … (June 10)
	Hannah Norman	Nine Surprising Things (June 5)
	Maddie Godfrey	Overwhelmed by Something (June 3)
	D.A. Gray	Shadow of a Flag (May 27)
	Joan Murray	Chiarascuro (May 20)
	Marjorie Lotfi Gill	The Wrong Person to Ask (May 15)
	Chera Hammons	Anything Worth Saving (May 13)
	Annie Woodford	In the Pipeline’s Path (May 6)
	Matthew Murrey	Pig Brain (May 6)
	Marissa Davis	Homeland: (May 1)
	Jessamine Price	Another Meeting in Panmunjom (Apr. 29)
	Ojo Taiye	The Only Foreign Aid … (Apr. 22)
	Jill M. Talbot	I’m Sorry, Moon (Apr. 15)
	Jhoanna Belfer	The Choicest Parts (Apr. 8)
	Gardner Dorton	MEARCSTAPA (Apr. 5)
	Margaret Ray	The Kids Are Alright (Apr. 1)
	Stephen Gibson	After Mozart’s Le Nozzi di Figaro … (Mar. 27)
	Craig Kurtz	Surveillance (Mar. 25)
	Jill M. Talbot	Questions for Stephen Hawking (Mar. 18)
	Saumya Kedia	In Time (Mar. 15)
	Sally O’Brien	Danger Island (Mar. 11)
	Megan Falley	Why So Many Penises … (Mar. 6)
	Surendriya Rao	I Want to Argue Like Dancing (Mar. 4)
	Brian Wiora	A Political Poem (Feb. 25)
	Lara Bozabalian	The New School (Feb. 22)
	Dante Di Stefano	Love Poem Composed Under the Trump … (Feb. 18)
	Sally Ashton	Let’s Get Rid of Valentine’s Day … (Feb. 13)
	George Abraham	Ode to Mennel Ibtissam … (Feb. 11)
	T.R. Poulson	Super Bowl Party (Feb. 4)
	Timothy Liu	State of the Union (Feb. 1)
	Marc Alan Di Martino	Worth It (Jan. 28)
	Noel Quiñones	Permission (Jan. 23)
	Francesca Bell	Girlfriend of Las Vegas Gunman … (Jan. 21)
	Deborah Rasmussen	Speaking of Stable Geniuses (Jan. 14)
	Bunkong Tuon	My Daughter, the Snow Bomb (Jan. 7)
		. . .
	2017
	Mai-Lan Pham	Rondo for the Night (Dec. 31)
	Melissa Balmain	Seasons Tweetings (Dec. 25)
	Brittney Corrigan	I’m Trying to Find a Poem About … (Dec. 24)
	Paul E. Nelson	698. Evidence-Based Poem (Dec. 17)
	Amy Miller	The World Entire (Dec. 12)
	Mia Kang	Graduate Student, Age 27 … (Dec. 10)
	J. Todd Hawkins	Something Less (Dec. 4)
	Alexandra Umlas	Touring the B-17 Bomber … (Nov. 28)
	Abby E. Murray	What I Didn’t Say at the Table (Nov. 26)
	Devi S. Laskar	Though the Stars Walk Backward (Nov. 19)
	Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley	I Can’t Close My Eyes … (Nov. 14)
	Elizabeth McMunn-Tetango	Partial List of Men (Nov. 12)
	Molly Fisk	Violence Fractal (Nov. 5)
	Jeff Whitney	The Blessing (Oct. 31)
	Aaron Poochigian	MMXVII (Oct. 29)
	Emily Sernaker	Now When I Think About Women (Oct. 22)
	Dion O’Reilly	Everything That’s Old (Oct. 15)
	Rebecca Starks	Open Carry (Oct. 8)
	Katie Bickham	The Ferryman (Oct. 5)
	Meghan Bechtel	Being a Girl in My Father’s House (Oct. 3)
	Dorianne Laux	If It’s the Last Thing I Do (Oct. 1)
	Barry Peters	We Saw Mother! (Sept. 24)
	Raye Hendrix	Elegy for a Spacecraft (Sept. 19)
	Devon Balwit	That Feeling (Sept. 17)
	Bola Opaleke	Home That Would Not Let Us Stay (Sept. 12)
	Eric Steineger	She (Sept. 10)
	Jennifer Hartenburg	Houston Is the Body (Sept. 3)
	Hakim Bellamy	Dick Gregory (Aug. 29)
	Elizabeth Knapp	The Year of the Eclipse (Aug. 27)
	Jennifer Reeser	Forensic Anthropologist … (Aug. 22)
	Stephen Gibson	Killers (Aug. 20)
	Raquel Vasquez Gilliland	I Know All Mothers Say … (Aug. 17)
	Megan Fernandes	Nukemap.com (Aug. 13)
	Sonia Greenfield	Dear Kim Jong-un (Aug. 8)
	Jordan Durham	After Seeing Princess Diana … (Aug. 6)
	Bayleigh Fraser	Straight Shooter (Aug. 1)
	Aaron Brown	Old Man Watching Dunkirk (July 30)
	Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach	Every Musician’s Suicide … (July 23)
	Brittney Corrigan	Truck Carrying Live Eels … (July 16)
	Jennifer Rane Hancock	The Last Days of Baseball (July 13)
	Luisa A. Igloria	Another Argument for Trying to Live … (July 9)
	Megan Merchant	A Town Praying for Rain (July 2)
	Meghann Plunkett	In Which I Name My Abuser Publicly (June 27)
	Olga Dermott-Bond	Grenfell (June 25)
	Joan Colby	Lordy (June 18)
	Alejandro Escudé	Republican in Red (June 15)
	Carter Smith	After the Paris Accord (June 11)
	Jackleen Holton	The Untranslatable Word (June 4)
	Jose A. Alcantara	Violaceae (May 28)
	Matt Hohner	How to Unpack a Bomb Vest (May 25)
	Steve Henn	Suicide Note (May 21)
	Meg Pokrass	America (May 18)
	Alejandro Escudé	I Heart James Comey (May 14)
	Jen Karetnick	Nobody Dies Because … (May 9)
	Ali Sohail	Hummingbird (May 7)
	Amanda Yskamp	Time(s) (Apr. 30)
	Matty Layne Glasgow	What the Mountains Are Silent About (Apr. 23)
	Robert Keiser	The Anti-Protest (Apr. 18)
	Chaun Ballard	How I Survived (Apr. 16)
	Dante Di Stefano	National Poetry Month, 2017 (Apr. 13)
	Ellen Steinbaum	Bids for Border Wall … (Apr. 11)
	Amy Miller	What I Would Tell My Daughter … (Apr. 9)
	Rachel Custer	Togetherness in the Age of Terror (Apr. 7)
	Robert Peake	Homesickness (Apr. 2)
	Alison Luterman	What We Did in the Resistance … (Mar. 26)
	Emily Sernaker	Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Alive! (Mar. 23)
	Nanci Lee	Happy (Mar. 19)
	Cristi Donoso Best	After a Long Journey (Mar. 12)
	Jed Myers	Jewish Cemetery Night (Mar. 7)
	Mai-Lan Pham	Pause (Mar. 5)
	Dore Kiesselbach	Goldilocks Zone (Feb. 26)
	Amy Elizabeth Robinson	Yesterday We Were Asked … (Feb. 21)
	Ananda Lima	When They Come for Us … (Feb. 19)
	Sonya Taaffe	An Obedience Experiment (Feb. 12)
	Craig van Rooyen	Why the Bobcat Returned (Feb. 5)
	Jamaica Baldwin	Call Me by My Name (Feb. 2)
	Richard Garcia	The Sublime (Jan. 29)
	Asiya Wadud	The Dog God (Jan. 24)
	Austin Smith	We Defy Augury (Jan. 22)
	Abby E. Murray	Poem for My Daughter … (Jan. 19)
	Gus Peterson	Nautilus (Jan. 17)
	Sarah Bates	When a Guy at the Bar Tells Me … (Jan. 15)
	Vicki L. Wilson	Shoveling Snow (Jan. 8)
	Lynne Knight	Year’s Beginning. Year’s Ending. (Jan. 3)
	Jill M. Talbot	Nobody (Jan. 1)
		. . .
	2016
	Ann Hart	Krampusnacht (Dec. 25)
	Zeina Hashem Beck	The Days Don’t Stop (Dec. 18)
	Sonia Greenfield	Ghost Ship (Dec. 11)
	Kate Peterson	Open Season (Dec. 4)
	Timothy Liu	Protest Song (Dec. 1)
	John Paul O’Connor	The Fall (Nov. 27)
	Karthik Purushothaman	Breaking News: Oscar Bait (Nov. 20)
	Katie Bickham	Villanelle for America 2016 (Nov. 15)
	Richard Garcia	Canada (Nov. 13)
	Barbara Crooker	Election Ghazal (Nov. 10)
	Meryl Stratford	My Mother Explains Why … (Nov. 8)
	Laura Esposto	Tradition (Nov. 6)
	Jess Rizkallah	T.S. Eliot in the Time of Trashfire (Oct. 30)
	Karthik Purushothaman	A Recommendation to the Committee (Oct. 23)
	Rachel Custer	How I Am Like Donald Trump (Oct. 18)
	Ned Balbo	Crybully (Oct. 16)
	Kathleen Lawrence	Trump’s Tip (Oct. 9)
	Samuel Hughes	Representation (Oct. 2)
	Steve Henn	Making Sense of This Election (Sep. 27)
	Hayden Saunier	Hard Facts 3 (Do Not Resist) (Sep. 25)
	Joe Balaz	In Dis Newfangled Oz (Sep. 18)
	Vicki Iorio	Why I Don’t Write Poems About 9/11 (Sep. 11)
	Raquel Vasquez Gilliland	Life on Earth (Sep. 4)
	M.K. Foster	Volta (Sep. 1)
	Mark Wagenaar	Poem for Max Ritvo, Perhaps (Aug. 28)
	Susan Comninos	How People End (Aug. 23)
	Megan Merchant	Road Closure, Aleppo (Aug. 21)
	Jackleen Holton	Olympia (Aug. 14)
	Julian Randall	The Search for Frank Ocean … (Aug. 7)
	Craig van Rooyen	Ode to a Nightingale in a Payload (Aug. 2)
	Meryl Stratford	A Brief History of the World (July 31)
	Sarah Wells	Of Thee I Sing (July 24)
	Scherezade Siobhan	The Mirror I Won’t (July 19)
	Frank Dullaghan	Promenade des Anglais (July 17)
	Nordette N. Adams	Digital Anthropologists … (July 12)
	Nicole Homer	The Dead Line (July 10)
	Bayleigh Fraser	Ghazal on Independence Day (July 5)
	Patricia O’Neil	Who Speaks for the Rock Snot? (July 3)
	Ryan Dzelzkalns	The World’s Smallest Snail … (June 26)
	Jackleen Holton	Alligators (June 21)
	Leila Chatti	While Reading the News … (June 19)
	Chris Emslie	Prayer for Anything but Prayer (June 14)
	Amy Miller	I Am Over Here Sobbing (June 12)
	Mark Wagenaar	Little Song (Altar) (June 7)
	Akua Lezli Hope	Endangered (June 5)
	Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee	No Urdu in Dilli, Mian (May 29)
	P.C. Vandall	At the Circus (May 22)
	Jana Harris	The Healthcare System (May 17)
	Jay Sizemore	Gun of a Bitch (May 15)
	Ilyse Kusnetz	Harbinger (May 10)
	Brody Parrish Craig	Profane Androgen (May 8)
	Maisie Williams	MTA (May 1)
	Luisa Muradyan Tannahill	Purple Rain (Apr. 24)
	Wederic Eubals	Jan Böhmermann the Great (Apr. 19)
	Sonia Greenfield	From Nigeria to New Zealand (Apr. 17)
	Bayleigh Fraser	To the Woman Who Ruled … (Apr. 10)
	E.E. Lampman	Letter to a Tardigrade (Apr. 3)
	Clint Margrave	Candidate (Mar. 29)
	Judith H. Montgomery	B-Word (Mar. 27)
	William Fargason	Images of Kurt Cobin’s Shotgun … (Mar. 22)
	Meera Jhala	I Don’t Quite Know … (Mar. 20)
	Catherine Pond	March 9th, Dusk (Mar. 15)
	David Miller	Elegy (Mar. 13)
	Victoria Kornick	On Access (Mar. 8)
	Kai Carlson-Wee	Signs (Mar. 6)
	Lea Tieger	Electorate (Mar. 1)
	Cortney Lamar Charleston	Chillary Clinton Said … (Feb. 28)
	Elizabeth Weaver	Electing Hell (Feb. 21)
	Peg Duthie	Look at That, You Son of a Bitch (Feb. 14)
	Rebecca Starks	Politicians (Feb. 11)
	Jonel Abellanosa	To the Red Fire Monkey (Feb. 9)
	Cade Leebron	I’m Drinking in Bed (Feb. 7)
	Aliki Barnstone	Late January Thaw, Refugees … (Jan. 31)
	Rosemerry Trommer	After My Friend Phyllis Shows Me … (Jan. 26)
	Maureen Doallas	Elegy: #LeilaAlaoui (Jan. 24)
	M.L. Clark	Whatever It Is It Comes in Waves (Jan. 17)
	Colin Pope	Major Tom Turns into Light (Jan. 12)
	Pepper Trail	This Refuge from Its Inception … (Jan. 10)
	Chaun Ballard	What Would You Say If You Were … (Jan. 3)
		. . .
	2015
	Wendy Videlock	A Toast (Dec. 27)
	Lorna Davis	The Campaign Before Christmas (Dec. 25)
	Ramandeep Johal	Watching the Sunset … (Dec. 20)
	Lisa DeSiro	Trumped-Up (Dec. 13)
	Deborah P. Kolodji	Haiku (Dec. 7)
	Lynne Knight	America Listen Allen Ginsberg … (Dec. 6)
	Susana H. Case	Level 4: Brussels (Nov. 29)
	Lisa Martin	If You Aren’t Really a Racist … (Nov. 24)
	Jessica Goodfellow	Perpetuation of the Species (Nov. 22)
	Joanna Lee	Moments of Silence (Nov. 15)
	Akua Lezli Hope	Resignation (Nov. 8)
	Katherine Lo	The Headline Reads, Processed Meat … (Nov. 1)
	Ariana Brown	Ossuary (Oct. 25)
	Emmalee Hagarman	Things That Happen (Oct. 18)
	Conor Kelly	The Gun and the Gown (Oct. 11)
	Gary Leising	Two Variations on a Triolet … (Oct. 4)
	Kayla Rae Candrilli	Daraprim (Sept. 27)
	Alejandro Escudé	The English Teacher Who Mistook … (Sept. 20)
	Sam Cha	I Am Michael Derrick Hudson (Sept. 13)
	Zeina Hashem Beck	Ghazal: Back Home (Sept. 6)
	Conor Bracken	I Worry That in the Blue Mornings (Aug. 30)
	Dore Kiesselbach	Mignon (Aug. 23)
	Rayon Lennon	Sky Beer (Aug. 16)
	Rhina P. Espaillat	Rhymes With Banish (Aug. 9)
	Amy Elizabeth Robinson	What Do You Give (Aug. 2)
	Tiana Clark	Sandy Speaks (July 26)
	Bayleigh Fraser	Let Me Tell You About … (July 19)
	Kerrin McCadden	In Praise of Jonathan Matthew (July 12)
	A.M. Juster	Hillanelle (July 5)
	Stevie Edwards	After the Vigil … (June 28)
	Patrick Ryan Frank	Landscape with Questions (June 21)
	Ace Boggess	Escape Envy (June 14)
	Suzanne Langlois	To Caitlyn Jenner (June 7)
	Abby E. Murray	Memorial Day 2015 (May 31)
	A.J. Bradley	Inheritance (May 24)
	Susan Cohen	The Boston Marathon Bombing (May 17)
	Bayleigh Fraser	Unsigned Mother’s Day Card (May 10)
	Jennifer Givhan	The Polar Bear (May 3)
	Will Nixon	National Poetry Month (Apr. 25)
	Meryl Stratford	Section B, Page 6 (Apr. 18)
	Cortney Lamar Charleston	Feeling Fucked Up (Apr. 11)
	Jackleen Holton	The Poetry Lesson (Apr. 4)
	Chera Hammons	The Descent of the Germanwings (Mar. 29)
	Janice D. Soderling	Dolphin Legend of the World Before (Mar. 22)
	Damian Caudill	How Florida Lost Its Edge (Mar. 15)
	Marie-Aline Roemer	Questions for Lyudmila (Mar. 8)
	C. Wade Bentley	Perfidious Under Fire (Mar. 1)
	Dante Di Stefano	Elegy for Philip Levine (Feb. 22)
	Leila Chatti	The Words Come, They Choke Me (Feb. 15)
	Beth Gylys	Levels of Shit or Thom Tillis … (Feb. 8)
	Vincent Toro	Gratuitous Super Bowl Poem (Feb. 1)
	Andrew Collard	Realism: For an Infant … (Jan. 25)
	Conor Kelly	Words for a Craven Editor (Jan. 18)
	R.G. Evans	Pussy Nation (Jan. 11)
	Chera Hammons	Sparrows (Jan. 4)
		. . .
	2014
	Emily Yoon	Hello Miss Pretty Bitch (Dec. 28)
	Russell Colver	The Night Before Christmas 2014 … (Dec. 25)
	Mihir Vatsa	In the Winter of 2014 … (Dec. 21)
	Lynne Knight	Dark Prison Ledger (Dec. 14)
	Marjorie Lotfi Gill	The Gun in Its Holster (Dec. 7)
	Lynne Thompson	Sonnet Consisting of One Law (Nov. 30)
	Rachel J. Bennett	Unsent Letter from Philae … (Nov. 23)
	Lynne Knight	On Hearing of Robin Williams’ … (Nov. 16)
	Kevin Heaton	The Electorate (Nov. 9)
	Sneha Madhavan-Reese	Nathan Cirillo (Nov. 2)
	Cortney Lamar Charleston	Miley Cyrus Presides Over … (Oct. 26)
	Jay Sizemore	How to Remove a Hazmat Suit (Oct. 19)
	Devin Kelly	Fear Of (Oct. 12)
	Amy Miller	For Those Who Would Kill … (Oct. 4)
	Julie Henson	I’m Not Calling It a Chasm (Sept. 28)
	Christopher Kempf	I Shot an Arrow … (Sept. 21)
	Sonia Greenfield	The Spokesperson Said … (Sept. 14)
	Peter E. Murphy	Labor Day: Atlantic City (Sept. 7)
	Lynne Knight	The Letter from James Foley (Aug. 31)
	Mark Smith-Soto	Streamers (Aug. 25)
	Sonia Greenfield	Corpse Flower (Aug. 24)
	Gabrielle Bates	Of the Lamp (Aug. 18)
	Jason McCall	Roll Call for Michael Brown (Aug. 17)
	Marjorie Lotfi Gill	Picture of Girl … (Aug. 10)
	Elise Liu	She Runs from the River (Aug. 3)
	Zeina Hashem Beck	Ya’aburnee (July 27)
	Megan Collins	How I Fathom the Crash (July 20)
	Elly Bookman	On July 8 (July 13)
	Rebecca Schumejda	Black Banana (July 6)
	Megan Collins	After the Memorial (June 29)
	Kari Gunter-Seymour	A Letter to Jani Larson … (June 22)
	Albert Haley	Presidential Poetry Briefing (June 15)
	Alejandro Escudé	The Other Me (June 8)
	Tria Wood	Instructions (June 1)