Best of Rattle

February 24, 2024

“Monopoly” by Steven M. SmithPosted by

Steven M. Smith

MONOPOLY

My son’s the sticky-fingered banker—
a vault of red licorice squeaks
in his mouth. He conducts business
from his wooden chair on his knees,
puffing on a fresh piece of licorice,
clutching his stack of $500 bills
as if the IRS is coming for his
fortune with a giant vacuum cleaner.
I’m responsible for the deeds.
I have the few remaining ones fanned
out like a questionable poker hand
on the dining room table.
I toss a handful of M&M’s—
such sweet analgesics—in my mouth
and wash them down with Kool-Aid.
Of course, my son’s got the car.
And I got the boot.
He’s got hotels like red parasites
from Pacific Avenue to Boardwalk.
And he controls the railroads too.
Landing on Luxury Tax would be
the answer to my prayers.
I just want to go to jail,
not pass Go and stay there;
the jail house shower is safer!
Well, I’ve mortgaged everything,
except my hotels on Cockroach Corner—
Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues.
I’m on Marvin Gardens, and it’s my
turn to toss those little evil
squares speckled with black holes.
I land on Chance, and I start to wipe
the sweat of bankruptcy from my face,
but then my son hears me whimper:
“Advance token to Boardwalk.”

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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__________

Steven M. Smith: “I know that my students are not likely to remember the titles of the poems I bring to the class, but I trust that by bringing passion to my students, they will know it’s possible, and go out to find something in their lives to be passionate about. I know this is possible through poetry.”

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June 6, 2023

“Waiting” by John HerschelPosted by

John Herschel

WAITING

Things don’t happen, they appear.
When I ask for a spoon,
they bring me a fork;
waiting has turned my spoon
into a fork.
 
The phone rings,
a huge distance between your head
and your other head.
 
There’s a place in the desert
where people go and shoot their cars,
discovered by De Anza on his perfumed horse.
 
My step-father in an orange vest
is still directing traffic in my head.
 
You can drown on the staircase,
you can wait for the desert to arrive.
 
The sky is a hat that neither covers nor hides.
 
I have a long conversation with the wall,
the longest lunar eclipse
in 123 years,
an Abyssinian moon that shatters windows.
 
My sleeve has a long memory.
I change my point of view
from one napkin to another.
 
My neighbor says
people are polite to the degree
they’re repressing an impulse
to kill you.
 
Mules are carrying the load
for no reason at all.
The rain in the gutter turns north,
a dog shakes himself in the rain.
It is a world ruled by the god of armored cars
and men in yellow shorts
taking pictures of the sunset.
 
My other neighbor says
it’s almost as if life were meant to be wasted,
as if you hadn’t lived enough
until you’d wasted your life.
 
I hear the little voice inside my head:
Hurry up and die, hurry up and die.
 
But the little voice inside my head
is like that guy in the Midwest
who writes everything down:
5:47 PM, earwax on the phone;
there’s an ant on my wrist.
 
His life is about three seconds
ahead of his diary.
 
And it’s beautiful tonight.
Every chance I get
I wish I didn’t have to die.
 
The plucky dog is still scratching his ear,
the asparagus fern is coming back.
 
A skunk came into the kitchen
and ate the cat food.
My two cats and I looked at him,
and then we looked at each other.
 
Now only little thoughts
are running after me,
wanting to be watered
and wanting to be fed,
like a quick tide
that raises and lowers
the level of the glass.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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John Herschel: “If you write poems, even your best friends won’t care. Your enemies might notice, but their attention will inevitably wander. Freedom of speech is also the freedom not to listen. People who think writing poetry is therapeutic are not writing poetry. Maybe more poets have been driven mad by trying to get a line right, than the mad have been driven well by writing a good line. In America we don’t like useless things. Ours is a culture of uplift and good intentions. The pathologically optimistic are suspicious of a poem’s reluctance to sing along. But maybe useless is useful in a world blind to its own impermanence. Anger is probably the only reliable substitute for inspiration, and given what’s happening to this country, everyone should be sublimely inspired.”

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March 11, 2023

“Gravel” by C.K. WilliamsPosted by

C.K. Williams

GRAVEL

Little children love gravel, kneeling to play in gravel,
even gravel covering dry, meaningless dust.

It’s not, “Look what I found!” it’s the gravel itself,
which is what puzzles adults: nothing’s there, even beneath.

But that’s just what Catherine, watching children at that,
especially loves: that there’s no purpose, no meaning.

So, that day in the metro when the pickpocket
she’d warned a tourist against knelt, glaring at her,

a hand at his ankle, I wonder if one layer of that instant
of her mind had drift into it, children, children and gravel?

It didn’t come to her until later, telling it to me,
that the thief may well have been reaching into his boot

for a knife, or a razor; only then was she frightened,
more frightened even than when the crook, the slime,

got up instead and shoved her, hard, and spit at her face,
and everyone else stood there with their eyes attached,

only then did she lean against me, and shudder, as I, now,
not in a park or playground, not watching a child sift

through her shining fingers those bits of cold, unhealable
granite which might be our lives, shudder, and shudder again.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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C.K. Williams: “About my poem: The thing that interests me about it, and what made it really possible to write, was the great disparity between the poem’s two themes, children playing in gravel, and men aggressing my wife on the subway. I wanted to write about what happened to her, but wasn’t able to until I found that frame to give some emotional distance from me. Maybe that’s what poetry is all about, pretty much?” (web)

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February 25, 2023

“Advice to a Writer Imagining Conception and Birth” by Colette InezPosted by

Colette Inez

ADVICE TO A WRITER IMAGINING CONCEPTION AND BIRTH

Look for a tree stump in the woods. Compare it to love,
examine the particulars, how your mother mounted
your father on Labor Day in a bungalow, Liberty, New York.

Describe a snowfall before your parents met. Take your time.
Leave out myth and literature. Relate it to life in an American
town, one with a rotating cocktail lounge.

Now imagine yourself as a parchment worm
wedged into a crevice to avoid attack. Liken your fear
to a clamp. How does it resemble the opal clam

from New South Wales? Speak up. Check it out.
Write a poem of departure in which you use the color blue,
a hue like the glow of fish cast ashore by a stormy sea.

Your parents are leaving town. They’ve rented a bungalow
in Liberty, New York. You’re not around to say: after dark,
exact change. You’re not even a tiny moonlet in a microscope,

a bluet in the woods. Contrast your nothingness to words
that start with “k”: killjoy, kisscurl, kelp. Are these words
comical in any special way? Say how you feel about kale.

Will you grow to leave it on your plate?
Your parents sit in a trance. They have just made love
and are counting snowflakes: uno, dos, tres …

Are they from Bogota, Colombia, and in New York on
a whim? You are about to divide. Say something about the
intricate coil of DNA. Double helix. Double Dutch. Jump in.

Make the leap. Now you’re a nation newly emerged.
Dispense with history, the transitory passions of people’s wants.
Words are dropping fast.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2005

__________

Colette Inez: “A poem is born right here, somewhere in my heart, in my blood vessels, in my gut. It comes to the brain much later. I have to feel them actually pulsing in my body, and then when they get shaped, when the brain, the controller, the pilot, whoever one’s metaphor, however this metaphor can extend, takes over. I like to think that my brain is the lesser part of my poems and that my heart, in the best of my poems, is the one that rules.” (web)

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March 10, 2020

“Halfway Down the Block, Your Father” by Lola HaskinsPosted by

Lola Haskins

HALFWAY DOWN THE BLOCK, YOUR FATHER

Stops. It’s just congestion, he says.
I have congestion, not naming it—
his lungs as gauzy as a party dress—
explaining instead how the medic
at the VA had told him his heart
was as strong as any fullback’s.
We wait while he musters the air for
the next few steps, refusing the car,
with the stubbled pride of an old man
whose frayed shirt collar has been
turned by his dead wife, and, having
no third side, cannot be turned again

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Lola Haskins: “Poems, other people’s, and when I get really lucky, mine, have connected me with sisters, brothers and angels, more deeply than I have ever been connected by blood to anyone. Besides, the high of finally getting myself clear on the page’s field is so addictive I can’t imagine ever stopping trying. In other words, it doesn’t matter how frustrating it is when it doesn’t work because it’s so sublime when it does. All of you out there who write will know what I mean.” (web)

 

Lola Haskins is the guest on episode #32 of the Rattlecast! Click here to tune in live or archived …

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July 2, 2019

“Life List” by Janet McCannPosted by

Janet McCann

LIFE LIST

My friend the scholar-birdwatcher
is dying, after a quiet regular life
of Milton and birds, and if I could

imagine him a farewell, it would be this:
to look out into the small yard
he tended for forty years, to where

he placed the bird houses, the martin
house and the hummingbird feeder,
just in time to see a sweep of air

curve in and take form, the great arctic gyrfalcon
not on his life list, there on the sill,
beak, feathers and pinions

and final knowledge, Adam’s homecoming
after the story’s end, better than Eden.
May he leave in his hand a feather, that his wife

might know where he has gone.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2005
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Janet McCann: “I’m most interested in animal rights and animal consciousness; when I’m not teaching at Texas A&M, which I’ve done since 1968, I’m probably chasing feral cats.” (web)

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December 1, 2018

“Christmas Trees” by John KennedyPosted by

John Kennedy

CHRISTMAS TREES

I’d rather see a field of them
with their arms full of snow, and maybe
some wren haunting the lowest branches,
flying from tree to tree
as if something could be undone.
Piece by piece, balsam, fir, pine
would give that field its wildness,
the first nature of anything worth knowing.
If I owned such a field, I’d never let
a tree be cut for Christmas:
let the pine cones take an age to seed.
I’d keep neighbors from meddling with that.
Though there might be a boy I know
who I’d let in to wander around.
His father will die three days before the holiday,
and this evening they’d have gone off
to buy some last city tree at a bargain price.
I’d let him in without judgment to find
a tree he’d like to hold for a time.
I know his mother.
I’ve seen her slap the boy.
If he brings one home this year, decorates it,
sets it with a star he’s balanced
from a chair, the way his father would have done,
she’d have it down and out the door in a fit.
That boy I’d keep in my field as long
as he needed a place.
I’d give him the music of snow.
The company of wrens.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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__________

John Kennedy: “If I can give any gift at all, I choose kindness, an ear to others’ troubles. This keeps me rooted in reality, not abstract ideas. I see my work as a poet as compromising the elements of tight writing—adherence to images and rich language—with good storytelling. If we care for someone, we tell him or her a story; usually it is our story we tell, whether we know it or not.”

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