June 1, 2018

Echo Wren

EUROPA

He was the first astronaut they sent
into space without arms and legs,
and not only that but blind as well,
which wasn’t an issue, thanks
to cameras installed on his helmet,
sending home images he would never see,
to a family he no longer had.

It was timeless in there,
in his suit that was just an oval pod—
no baseball games, no soccer scores,
no watching his parents turn into milestones,
no seeing how beautiful we all used to be
on Throwback Thursdays, before he was born.
No feeling fingers upon his face
and thinking, This is a hand, this feeling
is a hand, what is a hand?
This is a hand.
And now the cold of the universe
touches his cheek as he drifts
farther and farther to where
we cannot touch him.

And they say man can live on Europa,
because it has water. They say
civilization can still exist,
because a mind is there to imagine it,
even without an arm to pick up the stone,
or an eye to see where it should land.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Echo Wren: “I escaped Vietnam with my mother as a small child. I have no memories of my homeland, but somehow I recognize the soil, the sounds and smells. This language of impressions, preceding my capacity to understand, still forms the foundation of my being. I love poetry because it captures things half-remembered and lost. I write poetry because I am looking for home.”

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May 30, 2018

Echo Wren

THE LAST TOOTHBRUSH

When the end of the world arrived, I still had my toothbrush.
I felt ridiculous clutching it, but I had just finished brushing
when the alarms rang, and I needed to hang onto something.
I went out into the street in my pajamas.
The dawn had not yet broken, and in the civil twilight
wandered men who had fallen asleep in yesterday’s
shirt and tie, and children following the rules
of hide and seek, and couples dressed in rumpled bedsheets,
rustling like yesterday’s news.

I surveyed the dazzled mob. Most of these people, I bet,
hadn’t brushed their teeth yet, and among them
I felt like the luckiest. I was the wealthiest
in civility, in manners, in the passing style
of luxurious hygiene. I smiled forth the promise
of untainted breath, stain-free chompers
chomping through a new day, free of the life
I had lived and the life I had eaten, the blank slate
of my mouth with no history of decay—
and my pajamas were a clean pair.

I hung onto that toothbrush, why I don’t know.
It wasn’t a hand, it wasn’t a memory, the bristles
were worn down into curls. But the end of the world was here—
all boundaries were breaking, we were half naked
half awake on the streets, and somehow,
someway, through some blueprint of muscle
memory and the inheritance of rituals
and two-minute habits, I found myself
trying to find new ways to build
the walls again.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Echo Wren: “I escaped Vietnam with my mother as a small child. I have no memories of my homeland, but somehow I recognize the soil, the sounds and smells. This language of impressions, preceding my capacity to understand, still forms the foundation of my being. I love poetry because it captures things half-remembered and lost. I write poetry because I am looking for home.”

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May 28, 2018

Simona Chitescu Weik

WHAT THEY SMUGGLED ACROSS THE BORDER—

Sewn into their coats, their shirts, underneath skirts,
folded between plentiful breasts, or beneath hats,
under arms, on the underside of the small bowl of the knee,
or some women, who braided whatever was deemed
salvageable into their hair, woven into coils, pinned
tightly against the skull. Spoons, pearl earrings,
Charmeuse silk slips and jade bracelets. One even tried
to bring thirteen porcelain figurines, a nativity scene,
later shattered by patrolmen underfoot. Photographs
in varying tones of gray, a birth certificate, though very few
brought those, hopeful for new names to blot out the horrors
of their pasts. And pistols, snug against calves, no holsters,
cold steel to keep warm flesh company. Most brought
words like piine, pamint, libertate—words to kiss
their mouths and roll on their tongues one last time,
because so many carried a pact to forget, begin again,
but not you, father, you, mother, or you, uncle,
who still wear a necklace, like a tattoo on your chest,
one dangling bullet resting softly over your heart.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Simona Chitescu Weik: “I immigrated to the United States from Romania when I was fourteen years old, and after trying to write everything else, my experience under Communism, as well as being a child of two worlds, insinuated itself into my writing constantly, until I begrudgingly embraced the stories that demanded to be told. Coming to the United States at a later age than most of my other immigrant friends has also informed a love affair with language, an attention to textures of sound and synesthetic experiences that only something as dynamic as idiom can provide. Also, dislocation has created in me an obsessive attempt at finding, naming, reimagining the notion of home(land). I write because I belong among words and whispers.”

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May 25, 2018

Gene Tanta

WATCHING PAINT DRY

for David Dunlap

The house must notch itself out
of the nothingness that contains it.
Each room must fashion itself out

of the furrow that contains each room.
Every wall must carve itself out
of the crease that contains it.

And all of the paint must pour itself out
of the pleat that contains the paint.
And the paint brush must grope itself

into the gathering that contains it.
And the can of paint must groom itself
into the groove that contains the can of paint.

And the roller must slurp itself out
of the larger slurp that contains it.
And the trim brush must get itself out

of the bankruptcy that contains the trim brush.
The beveled bristles must goose themselves out
of the gutter that contains them.

Breath, too, must run itself out
of the rut that contains breath.
But it must run back in.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Gene Tanta: “I grew up in the Socialist Republic of Romania (1974–1984) under the Ceausescu regime. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to be an artist. I also felt the impossible weight of it. And so did my parents, and wanting nothing but the best for my fingernails and toenails, we emigrated from Romania when I was ten. As a first-generation immigrant, I acquired English as a second language by watching TV reruns like Gilligan’s Island and perking up to Chicago street slang. To strategically essentialize based on my experience, I would agree that ESL poets tend to hear English from the outside of its figurative echo chamber because the need to communicate with a new language demands sensitive attention to it as material. It does for me, anyway. The shock of the idiomatic delights my foreign ear because, as a foreigner, I hear the wisdom of a culture in its slang and in its clichés. This way, the road to our myth of origins is paved with the give of the figurative, with those attempts to catch a glimpse of the essence of a place in time. As an estranged person with creative tendencies, I take delight in these loaded everyday sayings and renew my poetic license at every turn of phrase.” (web)

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May 23, 2018

Divya Rajan

RANCHI, INDIA, 1966

A man cannot live well if he knows not how to die well.
—Seneca

Once she almost hacked a man to death, holding his collarbone
As an anchor; a rag picker who played too harsh with our pet monkey.

The bleeding trail he left behind as he ran, writhing in pain, to hide
In the bushes, somewhere

Kept damp in the misty cold, the greyish red fossilized.
The neighbors wound him up in a soothing fabric,

Drove him to the nearest clinic and kept guard over him,
Watching his pulse, dabbing his body with warm tulsi extract.

When he died, the local newspapers went into great depths
To explain the rare kind of pneumonia he had,

The one rag pickers were susceptible to. My mother
Sobbed like a baby when she heard the news

Before recounting the immense variables of reincarnations.
She dragged us to Vipassana sessions, of mindful silence,

Extolling virtues of stoicity.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Divya Rajan: “I spent over two decades of my early life with and in a chaotic, beautiful, eerily sensible space called Bombay, often described as a multicultural mosaic. Because of this umbilical good fortune, my earliest impressions have been pretty varied in terms of aesthetics, literature, and arts. I’d have always gravitated towards writing no matter the place or language influences, but it wouldn’t have been the same. This particular poem was derived from an epiphany I’d had about sense and chaos.”

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May 21, 2018

Yamini Pathak

INDIAN BEAUTY

My friend visits India for the first time
For the first time he sees a boy
defecating on the street

He is disappointed, he announces 
the beaches were littered with vendors
trying to make a fast buck
cheating foreigners, selling cheap trinkets

This is truth and I am quiet
Indian beauty is like the snow leopard 
in high Himalayan passes
She vanishes in the heat of a direct gaze

In the slant of early sun that rests on ancient stone 
you can find Her

In the dawn of an urchin’s smile
In the timeless shift of prayer beads in wrinkled hands
In the slide of patterned fabric against the slow sway of hips

She rises and falls from vision
In all that is held sacred—and much is held sacred—
books and trees, water and dust from the feet of a teacher
tales heard in the flute of a grandmother’s voice
smoke from a sandalwood fire

Like the curlicues of henna that snake up a bride’s ankles
She is visible only to a lover’s eyes

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

__________

Yamini Pathak: “I am an Indian-American mother, poet, and freelance writer. I moved to the United States almost twenty years ago and became a citizen last year. Many of my poems are an exploration of the cultural no man’s land between my birth and adopted countries, where I often find myself. Some are based on questions that were bothering me at the time the poem was written. Writing helps me clarify, if not resolve questions about home and identity. Mostly, I write because I am irritable and impossible to live with if I don’t.”

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May 18, 2018

Sue O’Dea

PRAYER

Oh Tinder Angel, rescue me
from men with diets gluten-free,
who never drink in restaurants,
gulp garlic pills, look deathly gaunt
and suffer lactose allergies.

They sniff most disapprovingly
when I knock back the fifth Chablis
and tuck into a cheese croissant.
Oh rescue me.

Just as I think I need to pee,
they clasp a hand upon my knee,
then move in close, all nonchalant,
to drone of apples in Vermont
and saving all the bumble bees.
Oh rescue me.

from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

[download audio]

__________

Sue O’Dea: “I am a Brit who has been living in New York City for three years. I moved from the leafy suburbs of London to slap-bang in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. The noise, the pollution, the general lunacy of the place sends me a little crazy. But I love the way this city never ceases to surprise me. Every day, at least one remarkable and strange thing happens. And this, of course, works as good inspiration toward writing poetry.”

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