Beth Copeland

June 22, 2023

“You Don’t Have to Choose” by Beth CopelandPosted by

A Lonesome Border by Carmella Dolmer, marker drawing of two shadowy figures looking down into a dark hole

Image: “A Lonesome Border” by Carmella Dolmer. “You Don’t Have to Choose” was written by Beth Copeland for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2023, and selected as an Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Beth Copeland

YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE

Between the cube and the circle,
the container or the eddying drain,
 
the cardboard box or the manhole,
the collapsing star or the burning house,
 
the fiery floor or the raspberry arch that becomes a rainbow
after a thunder storm,
 
the missing door or the haloed saints that hover
in the Tuscan afterglow,
 
the embodied self or the shadow
holding your hand,
 
the green selvage of the world
where everything grows—grass, kudzu, weeping willows,
 
or the waterless well you might mistake
for an open window.
 
Yes, you have free will. Yes, you have a voice.
Not choosing is also a choice.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2023, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the way this poem begins as a literal, generalized description of Carmella Dolmer’s piece—‘the cube and the circle’—and then progressively becomes more abstract and metaphorical—‘the haloed saints that hover,’ ‘the waterless well.’ Like the artwork, whose rich simplicity hints at more complex truths, ‘You Don’t Have to Choose’ seems to suggest that the cube and the circle are archetypal here, and the poet vividly and imaginatively explores this symbolism. The last stanza completely detaches from the imagistic nature of the rest of the poem to deliver objective statements, and the creative whiplash of this transition, combined with the undiluted truth of the statements themselves, renders the ending affecting and meaningful.”

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December 1, 2014

“What I Remember as My Father Is Dying” by Beth CopelandPosted by

Beth Copeland

WHAT I REMEMBER AS MY FATHER IS DYING

My sister calls it “a spanking,” but it wasn’t
a spanking. He yanked my ankles and held me

upside-down, hitting my bottom and back with
the flat of his hand like a doctor trying to force

a newborn baby to breathe, but I was nine
years old, listening to my sisters plead, “Stop,”

“Daddy, please stop,” until he dropped me
to the floor, and I ran to my room, crying.

When I tell people, they’re shocked. How could
he, they ask? What could you possibly have done

to deserve such a beating? What I don’t tell them
is that it was better being battered than being told

what a bad girl I was, so selfish, so ugly, so un-
Christian, that the brunt of his hand on my body

was a blessing because it meant my father’s sin
was greater than mine and I had been forgiven.

—from Rattle #44, Summer 2014

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Beth Copeland: “I wrote my first poem when I was fifteen years old, a rhyming poem using synesthetic images. Of course, I had no idea what synesthesia was, but the process of writing the poem was so exhilarating that I stayed up all night writing a second poem. The next day I showed the poems to my high school English teacher who said, ‘You’re a poet!’ I’ve been a poet ever since.”

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