November 21, 2018

Marvin Artis

PENUMBRA

She asked if I could see it. I suggested she look
for herself. It’s not possible, she said. I’m too old.
I’ve lost my flexibility. Can you see it? she asked again.
I lied and said I couldn’t. But there it was,
in her penumbra, a term I discovered while reading
a case in law school where a Supreme Court justice
declared that the hallowed, American right to privacy
wasn’t explicitly in the Constitution but in the penumbra
of the Bill of Rights. He misused the word. Penumbra means
the dark part of a shadow, a place of partial light.

I won’t reveal what she wanted me to see. It’s private.
What matters is that everyone has penumbras.
No person is a light source. We, the people, are not luminous.
We are not the sun, not even a beautifully lit candelabra.
Light doesn’t pass through us. No one is a clean glass
of spring water reflecting the morning sun. In low light,
our dense bodies block light and create shadows.

I didn’t like lying, but there wasn’t enough light to see clearly.
More than that, I didn’t want to argue about what I did see.
Every argument I’ve ever had was a debate about the existence
or non-existence of something. When everything can be seen,
there is nothing to argue about. Much of the time, I’m in low light
with my shadow companion and in communion with others
and their shadows, like our ancestors, warming themselves
and admiring each other around a dancing fire in the gloaming.
Half our lives are spent in the night and another portion
in the dim sun of cloudy days. We, the people, are used to low light
and the struggle to find things in it, which reminds me of those times
when I would rummage in my childhood bedroom, in a rush to find
something, too unaware and too used to the dark to turn on a lamp
or raise a window shade, as my mother would pass by, chuckle,
then hit the light switch, without saying a word.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “One of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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November 19, 2018

Marvin Artis

LIFE

I have this thing that I was given when I was born. 
It’s called a life. I really don’t know how else to
describe it. It’s so big. I can only say what it’s called.

It took me a while to figure out that this big thing was mine,
that I could do with it whatever I wanted.
After I decided what I wanted to do with it,
I changed my mind. Then, I changed my mind again. 
I changed it one more time.

Life, being whatever it is, also seems to have its own mind,
even though it’s yours. It’s like your father or mother or son 
or daughter or dog. They’re yours, but they have their own minds too.
So, at one point, my life said “no” to something I wanted to do. 
Just like that, it said, “no.” I was surprised.

I had this dream in which I was with this beautiful soul whom I loved 
who had the habit of telling me how to speak and what
words to use. Finally, I lost my temper and started screaming that nothing
makes me crazier than being told what to say and how to say it.
I kept screaming, “No, no, no, no!”

Life is like that too. It can scream, “No!” even though it loves you. 
It wants to be itself, to be looked at and loved for what it is, 
not for what you want it to be, especially when it has morning breath,
gets sick, puts on weight, loses its looks, its admirers or its money.
That’s when it wants you to reach out, hold its hand, to tell it
that it’s beautiful and that you will never leave it, even though
it will leave you. It’s so demanding, so precious. It’s something else.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Marvin Artis: “One of the things I’m most interested in, in poetry, is the opportunity to connect things that don’t appear to be connected. To bring my own disparate parts together and to also build that infrastructure internally, and then be able to apply that to my relationships with other people. The more connections I can find between disconnected things, the better my connections are with others.”

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November 16, 2018

Nasreen Yazdani

HOW TO TURN OFF A CEILING FAN

Pull one of the cords.
Is it off? Pull the cord again.
Is it off? Pull the other cord.
Pull both cords like you’re milking a really tall cow in the wind.
Is it off? Pull the cord twice.
No, the other cord.
Is it slowing down or speeding up?
Wait. Stay calm. Look for signs.
It’s slowing down!
Is it slowing down or turning off?
Call a psychic.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Nasreen Yazdani: “I once convinced my fourth grade teacher to allow me to submit all work in the form of poetry. Several tedious verses on long division later, permission was firmly rescinded. But I continued to compose poems relentlessly, undercover, year after year, and now as an adult I have given myself permission once again to share my writing. I’ve never felt so free.” (web)

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November 14, 2018

Jessica Venturi

TO MOURN

The difference between day and night is
a thick, bold u in the center.

Lips pressed tight together,
and humming.
Tastes like spaghetti
           in October.
Sweet tea in the summer
on a porch that smells
like menthol cigarette smoke.

Or,
Our tongue swelling big
in the back of our throat
stops the air
from escaping our chest.
Filling our stomach, filling
our heart with

No. No. No.
It shouldn’t have been. It is
and it shouldn’t be.
N-n-n-o. She is, now she was.
Never. Not. Nowhere. My
mother is gone.

And to grieve moves the mouth
wrong.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Jessica Venturi: “I write poetry because I want to make something beautiful out of the suffering. I write for the perfect word—for rhythm and rhyme and the way words feel in my mouth. I write to be heard and I write for the thrill of it. I write because I read. Because literature and poetry are magic. Because when I’m hanging on someone else’s words I feel wonder and yearning all at the same time. I was born and raised in California’s East Bay Area. I earned my BA in English literature from the University of Colorado, after many years of working odd jobs to stay afloat. I am now a graduate student in English at the University of Delaware. I have been a few different things in my life thus far, but there is only one thing I know that I am. I am a writer.”

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November 12, 2018

Daniel Valdez

LESLIE DOESN’T BELIEVE IN LOVE

Leslie takes her liquor straight
and her cocaine as pure as it can come.
She takes her men however she pleases,
but never keeps one around for long.
Maybe in some other time
or some other place
she could have learned peace—
but her head is full of gnats
now, so she doesn’t think much.

I tell her I love her
and she tells me the same.
But she calls me too hopeful,
too optimistic.
I say she’s too macabre,
too nihilistic.
She prefers, “realistic.”
I say, “If that’s reality,
then you can count me out.”

She says, “Life is pain.”
I say, “Your meaninglessness is
too easy, it takes a brave soul
to want to suffer the realness,
not your fabrication.”
I am called a fool
and left in a parking lot
at 2 a.m.
staring into an unlit void of

nothingness.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Daniel Valdez: “I write poetry because it contains beauty, honesty, and reality. Poems don’t always have to be true or emotional, but I believe they do have to capture a certain aspect of the human experience. Some poems can be meaningless and absurd, but even then they contain certain realities. Poetry is free and can be freeing, it is vast and encapsulates various concepts. I write poetry for its freedom and its transparency.”

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November 9, 2018

Ryan Thier

THE CALL TO POUR

“Number nine crew; number nine to pour.
number nine crew: number nine to pour.”

Our melt shop muezzin’s call drones out
thrice daily over the plant P.A. system.

The melters,
men, sometimes a woman, varied races and ages,
dressed in the Liberty green union jumpsuits,
turn in the direction of furnace number nine
to begin their prayers.

Working the knobs, the dials, the cranes, their devotions
manifest as a golden stream, a waterfall of liquid metal
slowly pouring out into four tall molds.

This time, yield is high—no spills, no blockages.
The ritual is successful, the plant runs smoothly,
the melters return to other tasks,
the giant flatbed freight trucks continue
to arrive and to leave.

The front-office managers, spreadsheet maestros,
see only ticks on a trendline, an
incremental increase
in the tribute submitted to their chieftains—to them,

the glimmer of the waterfall, the liquid light
diving from the crucible in half a perfect parabola,

runs out unnoticed.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Ryan Thier: “I’m a metallurgist who’s currently living and working in Chicago. I’ve spent time living and working in both central New York and central Illinois as well. Work and relationships factor heavily into most of my poems. I try to find the small magical tidbits that frequently pop up in both of these areas.” (web)

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November 7, 2018

Julie Schultz

SINGULARITY

Our circuits stopped working a while back,
except they weren’t called circuits then, just cells,
swimming and buzzing without a real knack.

Nothing about their memory compels
me to miss them. Ill-defined, messy blobs,
they created commercials where sex sells.

Those ads flogged everything and more. The slobs
listening or watching had no real chance
to rebel against the thoughts of the mobs.

These days, the circuits are mended. The plants
produce all the parts we will ever need.
When we want to, we imagine we dance.

Everything is available. Indeed,
the only thing we don’t do now is bleed.

from Rattle #61, Fall 2018
Tribute to First Publication

__________

Julie Schultz: “Since I believe artificial intelligence is going to meaningfully refashion society, I recently retreated from corporate serfdom and returned to college after twenty years. Unexpectedly, I discovered in a writing workshop that poetry is better suited than prose to the task of wrangling with the possible outcomes of a broadly more digital future.” (web)

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