September 14, 2020

Laura R. McCullough

eMcCullough-back

eMcCullough-front

Painting by Laura R. McCullough

from Rattle #68, Summer 2020
Tribute to Postcard Poems

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Laura R. McCullough: “I am such a chronic over-editor. I love (and shudder at) the word sketches postcard poetry forces you to create. What you can capture in a moment, before your subject walks out of the frame.” (web)

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June 4, 2020

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

photograph of a banana hanging on a hook against a yellow and black wall

Image: “Mund” by Laura R. McCullough. “The Larger Half” was written by Eric Kilpatrick for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Eric Kilpatrick

THE LARGER HALF

Two daughters and I choose
who gets the banana’s larger half.
I try like my own mom tried

to cut equal: the cake cut just so,
so that even inspecting our plates
parallel we might not argue but love

one another already and know
we were equals. I can picture
a hundred cakes consumed equally.

But holding the knife I wonder—
my younger one takes a run
at the word banana, “ANANA!”—

whether I can map my own kids’
days in the same symmetry. My own
fatherhood seems like an exercise in not

finding wisdom when I need it:
I see Solomon in sweatpants, knife
in hand, hovering over a single banana,

the women wailing in front of him.
We want our love to be exact. We want
to give everything we can clasp onto:

a brush of hair from their forehead,
a joke said again, “Dad again again,”
so that even crumbs become exacting.

from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2020, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Laura R. McCullough: “When I took this photo, I was struck by the simple absurdity of it. As an artist and writer, I’m always looking for things that inspire me, or that somehow ‘stand out’ from the world going on as normal. My initial thoughts on the photo were fairly literal and one-dimensional, so I was excited to see how different writers brought such unique ideas and perspectives to their interpretations. In ‘The Larger Half,’ the poet has taken an unassuming and warm approach to a deep subject: the insecurity of parenting. In reality, that insecurity spans beyond just the experience of raising children; in a world of inequality, the unfair and the unsolvable, I think sometimes we are all left grappling with crumbs.”

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May 28, 2020

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

photograph of a banana hanging on a hook against a yellow and black wall

Image: “Mund” by Laura R. McCullough. “Presidential Fitness Test” was written by Bill Hollands for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Bill Hollands

PRESIDENTIAL FITNESS TEST

Every year we’d suit up for the ritual
humiliation. Seven demonstrations
of my inadequacy for the red-
faced phys ed teachers. Pull-ups
were the worst. I’d eke out one then
fall to the ground and look up
from the dirt at the underside
of their clipboards. Girls did
“hang time” instead, and in 4th grade
Laura Lugar hung in there
for hours. Like a banana
on a hook, she thrust her chin
over the metal bar, curled her body
into a crescent and didn’t
budge. We went back to class
and in between decimals and
diagramming sentences the teacher
let us go back outside and have
another look at Laura. In my mind
she’s hanging there still in her yellow
uniform against the black dirt
and the pale of the morning sky.

from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I just couldn’t keep from smiling, thinking about this clever comparison of the banana on a hook to a 4th grader doing ‘hang time.’ Poetry’s job is to help us see the world a little differently, and this poem does that, delightfully.”

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