Best of Rattle

April 9, 2012

“People Get Ready” by Alan ShapiroPosted by

Alan Shapiro

PEOPLE GET READY

I couldn’t tell you where the Lord was traveling,
only that I knew he was
by how the lightning
flashed under his footfall
the way a rail does under a wheel.
He was traveling on a rail of lightning
made entirely of souls,
and I was there
among them, I was one of them,
invisible, uncountable,
suspended moment in an endless line,
and when it was my turn
to flash awake
into my short existence
under the pressure of his heel,
I knew my anguish
was the very way he moved,
how he could get where he was going,
though what the purpose of his going was
I couldn’t see.
I saw relentlessness, not purpose.
I saw how he went, not where.
And as he passed I saw
he no more thought of me
than a train thinks
of the sparks scattering
under its iron weight,
bright, then dark.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Alan Shapiro: “To me, the only thing that has kept me going through the years, as a writer, is that deep, private, self-forgetful joy that I feel when I’m working. When you sit down at the table and it’s eight o’clock in the morning and then you look up and it’s, God, it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. All that time has gone by as if in a single moment. And in that prolonged moment, you were completely given over to the task at hand, you were joyful, even if you were writing about how joyless your life has been. Because you had totally forgotten everything but the poem you were trying to make. This poem is an adaption of a dream quoted in William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience.” (web)

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April 8, 2012

“Snow” by Seido Ray RonciPosted by

Seido Ray Ronci

SNOW

On my way out the door, my son says,
“Dad, I have to poop.”
After all the work of bundling him up,
“Go ahead,” I say.
He sheds his parka, drops his snow pants,
and mounts the high white seat of the toilet.
I unbutton my coat, loosen my scarf,
let it hang from my neck, and wait.
Almost immediately he calls from the bathroom:
“Papa, check my bottom.”
I lean over the small of his back as he bows,
lost in the flurry of my overcoat and scarf.
I wipe the crack of his ass. He hops off
the toilet and pulls up his pants, I flush,
and see shit on the fringe of my scarf;
disbelieving, I hold it up to the light,
“There’s shit on my scarf!”
He puts on his coat, mittens, and hat.
I’m reminded of the young monk Ikkyu
wiping Kaso’s shriveled ass with his bare hands,
washing his master’s frail body, rinsing
the soiled sheets, wringing them out
day and night till the old man’s death.
I think, too, of the stains on my father’s bed,
the nurses drawing the curtains to clean him,
his sunken eyes, looking into mine, ashamed.
“It’s all right, Dad,” I say.
“It’s not all right,” he says.
My son tromps to the door, flings it open;
a blast of cold air rushes through the house.
I wash the fringe in the sink, tighten
my scarf and raise my collar.
He’s making angels in the snow.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Seido Ray Ronci: “I am the director of Hokoku-An Zendo and an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia.” (webpage)

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April 7, 2012

“To Small Acts of Tenderness” by Frank Mitrovitch ProsakPosted by

Frank Mitrovitch Prosak

TO SMALL ACTS OF TENDERNESS

I tell myself that I’ve begun to heal,
That this aging body is more flexible,
That these pains I live with have receded
As this river has receded in recent days:
My heavy green canoe
Now rests half its length
From the water’s edge.

My world is full of dirt, roots, mosquitoes,
And the rattling wind in the aspens:
“The North,” it says, “is the place of wisdom.”

Here, on this permanently frozen latitude,
I’ve learned to understand nothing,
To believe nothing.
Empty, I dedicate these soiled hands
To small acts of tenderness.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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April 6, 2012

“Three Prayers from the BrokenHearted” by Alison PelegrinPosted by

Alison Pelegrin

THREE PRAYERS FROM THE BROKENHEARTED

I. Earl

In many failures have my daughters cried.
Certainly they stumbled into trust
at the rough, uncertain hands of other men.
They’re women, but I think of them as girls—
baffled by the lust behind locked doors
and the mirrors spitting back their looks—
stone plain and not a chance.
I’m a disappointing man—broke
through both their homes—once a mournful drunk
and once an unassuming man of Christ.
Both times I loved their mothers blind, believing
as I burned them through with my desires
that a real man loves with pain. In my old age
I’m beaten down enough to pray for them
and for myself, mostly bald, retreating
to the loneliness from which they sprang.
Let them meet and laugh and cry in the same day—
half-sisters, half-estranged, with the same astonished face.

II. Cheryl

In the picture I am six and he’s staring down,
a dark, good-looking man with distant eyes.
Among wide oaks we walked in City Park—
him steering with my braids until we found
a place to watch the iridescent ducks.
He said the greatest trees had names—
The Seven Sisters tangled in distress,
The Dueling Oak, beneath which brave men died.
The day he left my mother cut my hair—
she grabbed the braid beneath my nape and sawed.
I didn’t move. She said I had to try
to be her little man because my daddy
went and had another little girl.
If I never have another wish,
let her be ugly, blind, and, may her hair
unbraid like moss in the dirtiest of swamps.

III. Eunice

I keep two chickens in the yard. Some mornings
they drop eggs. I search for you in strangers—
at the grocery or holding up the line
at DiMartino’s. In the Gretna daylight
every climate is the road to you—the liquid heat
or brown banana leaves beneath the frost.
Cheryl—what woman would I be if you were here?
Would we be sisters? Would we be old maids?
You could bring your daughter and we could cook
and sit and talk across the kitchenette.
I keep two stubborn chickens in the yard
and brew my coffee through bleached flour sacks—
there’s a pot on now, bitter and black as his heart.
(Our father will not speak of sorrow, wrath,
not love or hate, and least of all your name.)
Mostly I’m in silence when the sadness comes,
imagining the woman I’d be if I were whole.
How can it be he kept us both apart?
I keep two chickens in the yard, and several cats.
You say the word and I will wring their necks.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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March 24, 2012

“Telemarketer” by Brett Garcia MyhrenPosted by

Brett Garcia Myhren

TELEMARKETER

I’m reading on the couch
when she calls, asks for me by name.
I smile at her scripted intimacy,
imagine her cubicle with photos of pets,
the long bend of light
on her lacquered nails.

“Listen to this,” I reply,
“David kissed the soft inner banks
of women’s thighs.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, there’s more,” I say,
“Thighs like loamy earth
that cup the rivers, or lilies
blooming in rose and mint.”

“Is this a bad time for you, sir?”

“Is it for you?
Tell me something,” I insist.
“Tell me anything.”

A quiet unfolds between us
as though we’d spent our breath
on withering arguments
or lost it
in the scented air of sweat.

Finally she says,
“I’m in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Outside, leaves are turning
in the cold.”

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Brett Garcia Myhren: “Writing, at least as it applies to me, is more like an infection than a conscious decision. Though it’s hard to say exactly when or where it began, I remember taking a poetry class in college and reading a poem called ‘Keeping Things Whole’ by Mark Strand. At that moment, I realized that poetry was different than what I had expected.” (web)

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March 23, 2012

“Sweet Nothings” by Micki MyersPosted by

Micki Myers

SWEET NOTHINGS

I had a dream once I went to work late. I found somebody else on the machine. He messed up the hearts. The boss blamed me for it. I was so upset. Then I woke up. You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know how to adjust the machine.
—Tony Santos, 27

The candy heart maker
works sixteen hours a day.
He reads the red endearments to himself
under the roar of the machine.
HOW R U? he asks no-one. DIAL MY #.
When the hearts turn him down,
bob on past to the next pair of greasy hands,
he shakes his head NO WAY.

At night he changes light bulbs
in an office building downtown.
He whispers sweet nothings to them
when no-one else can hear—
SAY YES
TELL ME
ON FIRE
You can hear him at the bar,
his hands clasped tight
around a beer—
ALL RIGHT!
HINT HINT
GOT CHA
SO FINE

He takes them home to his girl,
but they’re not free.
Three for a buck,
and still they make him pay.
SAY NO
YOU BET
GO AWAY
After dinner, her face
folds itself into a fist
when he pulls a pack from his pocket,
trying to make conversation
before clearing the dishes away.

Two years and nothing seems to change.
He’s so tired he can’t think of anything to say.

On the way out she asks him
if she’s more than just his Sweetheart,
and he says
I HOPE
CUTIE PIE
YOU’RE TOPS
BE MINE

When he looks up
his TRUE LOVE’s gone
and there’s no-one but himself
to break the silence.

He wants to tell her
how much he loves her
but can’t adjust the machine.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Micki Myers: “I am currently working on a series of poems that give voice to American advertising icons to hear what they have to tell us about what it’s like behind the scenes and the nature of celebrity.” (website)

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March 19, 2012

“Broken Egg Sunset” by Melissa LambertonPosted by

Melissa Lamberton

BROKEN EGG SUNSET

I’ve never seen the sky this color
sort of egg yolk around the edges,
but pale as milk above, until
deepening to a shade like that
of flowers.
Here, this will help, exactly
exactly like the color of the smell
of summer grass.
Not daytime green, when gnats
are as breathable as air, though more often
noticed—no, like this grass
beneath me, all shadow
scent and sound.
Lying here, the world is tipping
into night
in that gentle mess above me/below me
I’m waiting for first star.
The velcro earth catches me
with grassy barbs, but in a moment,
in a moment
the curving bowl of dusk
will slip, and tumble, and pour
upon me the omelet of a
dying day, minus the red
chili pepper sun.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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Melissa Lamberton: “I still remember every word of the first poem I wrote. I was in second grade, and I thought you could compress all the solemn wonder of nature into five lines about a tree. For me, poetry has always been a tribute to the passage of the moment. Whenever I write, I remember that second-grade girl and once again live in her simpler, more beautiful world. In real life I am a college student and a karate instructor with a secret fascination with medieval weaponry.”

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