December 18, 2023

Mike White

SOUTHPAW

The boy every boy
wanted to be, showing us
one day in the dugout
 
how he’d bloodied his old man’s
 
gravestone with a single
fist, with a right 
and a right and a right
 
because … he started
to say and stopped. 
 
We all looked 
at our hands, we all
had fathers.  
 

from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

__________

Mike White: “I love to write about sports and other games that we play. It seems only half correct to suggest that sports can serve as a metaphor for life. As any sports junkie can attest, it’s at least as true the other way around. I had already written and submitted ‘Southpaw’ when Ron Koertge’s life/basketball/life poem, ‘Things and How They Work,’ from Rattle 77, turned up on my porch—but his is a poem that sets the bar, and sets it high, for this sort of thing.”

Rattle Logo

November 26, 2022

Mike White

HAPPINESS

fills
half a room

no one around
to lift the thing

all those parts

after a while
you give up

even dusting

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006

___________

Mike White: “For me, the writing of poems requires an equal measure of trust and luck. I write to see what will happen. Some days are better than others. It’s like fishing. The first line is the reluctant worm. I have a cooler full of worms. A head full of fish.”

Rattle Logo

July 5, 2021

Mike White

DEATH

She brushed it aside
and brushed it aside

as we all did
the fly that kept
landing in her casket.  

from Rattle #71, Spring 2021

__________

Mike White: “A sizable portion of what I write would best be described as ‘whistling in the dark’ around death. The whistling gives me some peace, and even some pleasure.”

Rattle Logo

April 24, 2019

Mike White

THE WAY

The fourth leg
of the dog
with now only three
was the 

in-the-way one
he’d lift
in order to pee.

from Rattle #62, Winter 2018
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Mike White: “Charles Simic has a wonderful poem called ‘Country Fair’ about a six-legged dog. My poem is about a three-legged dog, so the bar is set lower. I wrote the first draft very quickly and then toyed with the thing over the course of about a year. The ultimate title came toward the end of the process, and then I had to make changes to the poem that aligned with how the title was teaching me to read it. Then I gave up, and sent it to Rattle.”

Rattle Logo

March 21, 2018

Mike White

AMEN

A man in a world
all his own is singing
the alphabet song
slowly to calm his son
who as we all turn

to look is also a man
moving his spellbound
tongue to retell
one by one each loved
and loving sound

from Rattle #58, Winter 2017

__________

Mike White: “The first poet I ever saw give a reading was the Canadian poet, Al Purdy in Toronto. I was about 25. He was quite famous as poets go, but I didn’t know it yet. As he repeatedly cleared his throat to begin, I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed for him, that he was still writing poems at his advanced age. Well, I’ve forgotten most things from that time in my life, but I haven’t forgotten that reading.”

Rattle Logo

December 14, 2015

Mike White

SO, IF EVERYONE JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE

I’d never
get over the loneliness.
I’d be surprised as all hell.
I’d say it like a sutra: everyone.
I’d rave, I’d mourn, I’d sulk, I’d run out of food
and have to go shopping.
I’d bring along a credit card and a driver’s license.
I’d roll through stop signs, nervously.
I’d maneuver my shopping cart through the cavernous aisles,
reading the advertised specials, as if
I was taking part in a zombie movie, becoming
by turns the victim, the zombie, the actor.
I’d wonder at the sheer number of mirrors in the world.
I’d go to bed early, thinking, I’m going to wake up and …
I’d be afraid to go out at night, like a refugee, like a woman.
I’d stop showering because someone
might be on the other side of the curtain with a knife
now that there was no one to protect me, now that there was no one.
I’d stop showering just because I could.
I’d start thinking that maybe this all meant I was immortal
which I had long suspected was the case
and then I’d reason that just because everyone else
had jumped off a bridge it didn’t follow that I was going to live forever.
I’d want to die much of the time.
I’d stop writing poems, nothing more
than a mild shock, like opening the fridge in the middle of the night
to find the power had gone out.
I’d read the same shit differently, and by candlelight eventually.
I’d translate the faces in the photo album into Braille.
I’d scan the dawn sky for airplanes, the hedges for lost pets.
I’d cry for joy hearing a sparrow, a cricket, whatever.
I’d know the month and the day of the week so help me God.
I’d drive to bridges and then to the bridge,
iron railings in a rolling fog.
I’d gaze down and into
the onrushing water, into my
own improbable shadow.

from Rattle #49, Fall 2015

__________

Mike White: “I was reading Hart Crane’s The Bridge when I wrote this poem. That was the nudge I needed, a ‘jumping off’ point, if you like. And then Crane left me. I haven’t seen him since.”

Rattle Logo

April 29, 2015

Mike White

FATHERS

This one saws the board.
This one sees the board
but does not saw it, or not
as his father sawed it.
This one saws
his kids in half
but does not see it.
This one is bored.
This one still sees what he saws,
his second wife says.
This one saws to have something
real to seize.
This one for the scent of pine.
This one for the sound.
This one sees saws
as everything around him
comes slowly crashing down.

from Rattle #46, Winter 2014
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Mike White: “‘Fathers’ is clearly a playful poem. Though more and more I see all poems—even deathbed poems—as rooted in an impulse to play. After all, aren’t we most in earnest, and most ourselves, when we’re playing? Aren’t we never more fully alive?”

Rattle Logo