New Yorkers

August 5, 2015

“Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the Sea” by Martin H. LevinsonPosted by

Martin H. Levinson

GILLY GILLY OSSENFEFFER KATZENELLENBOGEN BY THE SEA

Where is Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen she said as we motored down the Long Island Expressway and I said
where is it written that I have to answer your crazy questions and she said
where did I put my makeup purse and black mascara and I said
where did I go wrong in life that I have to continually listen to a woman talking to herself and she said 
where is the pretzel stick that I gave you to save for me this morning and I said 
where is the nearest insane asylum I can drive you to, to get you treated and she said
where do you get off talking to me like that and I said
where do you think you are, in a chauffeured limo with a driver who will cater to your every whim and she said
where can I hit you that will leave no marks and not cause us to crash and I said
where are the quarters that I left in the glove compartment to pay the tolls and she said
where oh where have his little coins gone oh where oh where can they be and I said
where they are is where I put them unless someone placed them somewhere else and she said
where do you think that would be Sherlock and I said
where do you think a person who doesn’t care about taking things and not replacing them would put the money and she said
where the hell are we and I said
where we have always been and she said
where is that and I said
where that is, is for me to know and you to find out and she said
where is the next rest stop I need to get out of the car and I said
where can a guy go to get some peace around here and she said
where there’s no human beings around like Mars and I said
where did we go off the rails on this trip and she said
where we went off was when we met ten years ago and I said
where do you think you’ll be ten years from now and she said
where I can wake up happy and not be hassled by you and I said 
where exactly do you think that would be and she said
Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the sea.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

__________

Martin H. Levinson: “I agree with Fran Lebowitz who said, ‘When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.’ I have lived in New York City for 68 years and writing poetry has helped me to make sense of this wacky, wonderful, wicked place. ‘Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzenellenbogen by the Sea’ involves a conversation on the LIE (Long Island Expressway). I enjoy writing poems and the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry. That’s what Billy Collins said and I concur. Please excuse me while I go back to my desk.” (web)

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August 4, 2015

“Miss Jacklyn Analyzes Love” by Arden LevinePosted by

Arden Levine

MISS JACKLYN ANALYZES LOVE

I asked her for a poem. She made one that went:
It was night.
The love went by.

My young author knew love
was a good word. At times,
love spent time in her house.

I told her: That’s lovely.

So the poem was lovely and
the word was lovely. Love,
also, maybe, was lovely.

But, long still would she wait
for an understanding
of adverbs, –ly words that live leeward

that protect love and other words
from wind damage, from collapsing
if they otherwise held up a sentence alone.

What does love do when it goes by?
My young author had no knowledge
of Paul Revere when she wrote the poem.

But, for my part, I picture love galloping
through a town square late at night.
(Not galloping. I’m forcing the metaphor.)

Love is walking, assertively walking.
It is announcing, loudly announcing.
Get up! Love is going by!

If you are asleep, wake up! If you are writing,
come have a look at love, here in the flesh!
If you are making love, keep doing that.

Lovely.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

__________

Arden Levine: “My father (a native Manhattanite) would often remark that the city was on its best behavior just before dawn. He once took a photo of my mother (born in the Bronx, raised in Queens) in the center of the West Side Highway at first light, and not a single car blurred the periphery of the image. Forty years later, from my apartment above Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, the sound of the rare truck passing at 5:00 a.m. has the quality of a shallow tidal stroke. I listen to the boisterous poetry in the city’s daily din, but I tune in most closely to the subdued poetry in its morning reverie.”

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August 3, 2015

“New Poems” by Jan Heller LeviPosted by

Jan Heller Levi

NEW POEMS

Every time I pick up the pen, I write myself out of the canon. Who said that? Mina Loy? Maybe it was me.

* * *

This book is wonderful. Why didn’t I read this
before. Before what? Why didn’t
I read everything? Why didn’t
I read everything before? Before 
what? Before I felt like
I should have read some-
thing before. When was
that?
Before
I became the person who needs
to have read it
before. But maybe
if I had read it before,
I wouldn’t be the person
who needs to read it now. I’d
be another person, and I’d need
to read something else I
hadn’t read
before.

* * *

S. says long sections of P.’s novel are stolen. He goes to courthouse records, provincial libraries, he finds transcripts and journals that he drops into his text like stars, like his own stars, when they are really the stars of another. “I’m a thief,” S. says P. told him after too many glasses of wine. P., who is also a novelist, spends half the night getting us to agree (immediately) that this is wrong. 

* * * 

ON METER

Demeter, sister of Zeus, goddess of grain and agriculture. Persephone, her daughter, abducted by Hades. Disguised as an old woman, Demeter goes searching among mortals. She arrives at Eleusis, where she is employed as an attendant of Queen Mateaneira, who recognizes her nobility, bade her sit and eat and drink. She remains standing, apart, until a slave woman called Iambe lifts up her skirt and makes her laugh. 

* * *

MY WHOLE LIFE

He wouldn’t give me cancer’s email because he was afraid I might write something that would hurt its feelings. 

* * *

i want to
interrogate my childhood, drag it
into the station house, taunt
it with cigarettes,
glare the overhead lightbulb
in its eyes and demand
its confession.

whereas, a.m. says, “i can’t get past my unknowing, which, at times, unexpectedly, brings me joy.”

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

__________

Jan Heller Levi was the featured interviewee in this issue. Visit Rattle.com later this summer to read the conversation.

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July 30, 2015

“But How Can You Name What You Don’t Have” by Michele Lent HirschPosted by

Michele Lent Hirsch

BUT HOW CAN YOU NAME WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE

The man on the train with the
casual boner is reading The Beautiful and
the Damned. He reminds me I’ve never read
that particular book and I’ve also never had

a boner. What’s more important: to read every
novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald or to feel
what this man feels daily, nonchalantly,
this everyday taken-for-granted erection

beneath Adidas exercise pants?
To feel it just once, as a woman, a woman
who isn’t saying that her body is
the wrong one but who’s always, I mean

always, needed to test that out
herself. Not the Adidas
pants. Just the erection. Not for
sport, but to be certain.

The man sees me glancing at
the spot where he juts out. He
probably mistakes the way that
I want it.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

[download audio]

__________

Michele Lent Hirsch: “That I grew up without a car, without that bubble of privacy, probably informs my work. The subway, for one, sneaks into my poems—but it’s more than that. It’s how I don’t mind being squished against strangers, all of us observing each other, all smelling each other while pressed close. That, and there’s a certain cadence. I was bombarded by family members’ strong accents—some from the Bronx, others from Manhattan and Brooklyn—and my writing must’ve absorbed all those lilts.” (website)

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July 29, 2015

“Continuing Education” by Linda S. GottliebPosted by

Linda S. Gottlieb

CONTINUING EDUCATION

The 6th Street psychic pulls me into our vestibule
to show me her breasts. She lives two floors below
and she’s got that dark, thick tan like the first bite
of an early plum, this lady can pull me anywhere.
Star, she calls me, which of course is better
than any actual name. She has a boyfriend
some nights, the boyfriend of the universe,
who sets up the blue light under her blue
umbrella on the street—come Star, he says,
sit under the light so I can see how blue you are.
His skin, thinner than the psychic’s,
futuristic. His mustache, his thick, hairy legs
right there pumping like a second heart,
like he’s Garibaldi charging in seersucker and beige.
Hours after the psychic, he pulls me into the vestibule
himself, spreads his arms, grazes the mailboxes
on one wall, the exterminator’s laminated check-off
on the opposite, he’s that big across, that big
up and down, paint flecks fall into the creases
of his belt hand. There is always a reason
to be taken through a doorway, someone’s fingers
used and ready, promising to thrust back time.
Don’t I always believe it? Right now right now
now now the only beat in a paragraph
I ever seem to hear, like fluorescent electron
hum from the ceiling. The psychic’s right outside,
laughing, her teeth wide. She’s got a patient,
a customer, her table’s full of cards, her breasts
as young as the planet. She has her timer set.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

__________

Linda S. Gottlieb: “When my sister was a baby, the hookers down on 14th Street used to coo to her in her stroller. New York seems normal to me, all those hot Weegee crowds, elbows everywhere, the city vile and evil and lovely and magical, like every hometown. New York, its ash and streets and ghosts, set my rhythms, and I’m always trying to write my way into and out of its siren songs.”

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July 28, 2015

“Pilgrimage” by Tony GloegglerPosted by

Tony Gloeggler

PILGRIMAGE

Think of the time you flew
into Albuquerque, the drive
from the airport, flat thirsty
red-brown land spreading
in all directions, a snow-capped 
mountain sitting on the horizon,
the adobe village, an old Navajo 
driving a creaky bus uphill, 
reciting rehearsed facts, wounded 
jokes meant for white folks
as the sun blistered down on ancient
dwellings haunted by ghosts 
of dry-boned medicine men,
young women who fled to the city,
bread frying over a high flame.

The faded purple Acamo t-shirt
is now tucked in your bottom 
drawer. You were taking a breath, 
running from your most recent 
heart wreck, trying to learn 
what it would mean to leave 
behind a boy, Jesse, you treated
as your only son, some future
you dreamed of building. After
learning how deep a night could grow
without New York City lights,
you woke early and drove hours
to stand in line with shuffling, hunched-
over old women who twisted,
entwined strings of black beads
in their fingers as Japanese tourists
dangled cameras from their necks.

You sat in a back pew, watched 
the women light candles, kneel, 
then fervently trace the sign
of the cross while you remembered
the legend of a bursting hillside 
light and a local priest finding
the miraculous crucifix
of Our Lord of Esquipulos
in the famished ground, 
carrying it to Santa Cruz, 
only to have it disappear 
three times and return 
unexplainably to the place 
it was first discovered. 

You ducked into the sacristy,
the sacred sand pit, its walls
lined and cluttered with discarded 
braces and crutches, hand-
made shrines attesting 
to its many miracles. 
As women with tears shining
on grateful faces prayed, 
you grabbed a fistful of dust, 
placed it in a see-through 
sandwich baggie, slipped it 
into the shirt pocket covering
your heart, and later hid it 
in your satchel for the flight home.

Further back, you’re the first son 
of your family’s second generation 
born in America. Grandparents, uncles, 
aunts and cousins celebrated
your every breath as God’s 
gracious gift until you turned
four years old and your legs
grew into heavy, dead weight
that hurt anytime you walked 
anywhere. Your parents, fearing 
polio like your Uncle Dom,
went to early morning masses,
lit green novena candles 
and started collecting money 
to send you on a pilgrimage
to Lourdes. Doctors took countless
tests, kept you in a hospital
for six months where nuns
somberly patrolled the halls
and the kid in the next bed, 
an orphan, with one wooden leg, 
one wooden arm, and a pirate hook 
for a hand, somehow had the same
last name as yours. Your parents
brought both him and you gifts,
talked of taking him home too
as you grew sick with jealousy.
When they finally gave a label
to your disease, they cured it
with a Frankenstein boot, 
a leg brace and hours,
months of physical therapy
that made you stick out,
a cripple, separated from the rest
of the neighborhood kids
and the money was spent
on a station wagon to drive
back and forth to clinic visits.

Then yesterday, after a technician 
with a hard-to-understand
Russian accent kept asking you
to breathe in, breathe out, 
hold it, now breathe regularly
while tracing, rubbing 
a tiny camera over your chest 
and belly in a chilly room 
for too long, the cardiologist 
proclaimed your aorta was too
wide, susceptible to a rupture 
that could instantly kill you 
like the actor who starred 
in that crappy seventies sitcom
Three’s Company. He described
the procedure, the high rate 
of success and the surgeon 
as a miracle worker with hands 
like God, an enlightened plumber, 
replacing a pipe, tightening a valve. 

Stunned by the news, you sat
silently. On the subway home, 
you remembered the actor’s name,
John Ritter, and remembered
how good he was in Sling Blade 
and you wished that you still 
believed in any kind of God 
sometimes. You wished 
you didn’t have to tell your mom
or miss another visit with Jesse,
wished you remembered a plumber 
other than Dan Akyroyd bent 
beneath an overflowing sink 
on a lonely Saturday night, 
the crack of his ass peeking 
over the top of his pants, 
poised for the next straight line, 
laughing at you for ever
feeling indestructible, safe.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

[download audio]

__________

Tony Gloeggler: “A life-long resident of NYC, I was born in Brooklyn but left with my family during the white flight of the ’60s. I grew up in Flushing, now live in Richmond Hill, and helped open a group home for developmentally disabled kids in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, decades before the quasi cool hordes moved in with their bars and restaurants, laptops, nannies and doggies to mess up one more fine NY neighborhood. Writing started out for me as the place where I got my thoughts and feelings down when I had no other place to bring them. It is still that place, the place I go to first when I’m trying to figure things out, way before I can say something to either myself or anyone else. I wrote this one after some bad, out of nowhere, overwhelming medical news and connected it to times when I remembered feeling very similar. Then after working it out, making it feel as right and true as I could I gave it some air and showed it around, read it out loud …”

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July 27, 2015

“I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom” by Kim DowerPosted by

Kim Dower

I WORE THIS DRESS TODAY FOR YOU, MOM,

breezy floral, dancing with color
soft, silky, flows as I walk
Easter Sunday and you always liked

to get dressed, go for brunch, “maybe
there’s a good movie playing somewhere?”
Wrong religion, we were not church-goers,

but New Yorkers who understood the value
of a parade down 5th Avenue, bonnets
in lavender, powder blues, pinks, hues

of spring, the hope it would bring.
We had no religion but we did have
noodle kugel, grandparents, dads

who could fix fans, reach the china
on the top shelf, carve the turkey.
That time has passed. You were the last

to go, mom, and I still feel bad I never
got dressed up for you like you wanted me to.
I had things, things to do. But today in L.A.— 

hot the way you liked it—those little birds
you loved to see flitting from tree to tree—
just saw one, a twig in its mouth, preparing 

a bed for its baby—might still be an egg,
I wish you were here. I’ve got a closet filled
with dresses I need to show you. 

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

[download audio]

__________

Kim Dower: “I grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan—89th off Broadway—in ‘The Party Cake Building,’ apartment 6D, when NYC was still a place for middle class families, not just a city for the rich. I was the handball champion of the street, Benny’s hotdog stand and the New Yorker Bookstore on one side, Murray the Sturgeon King around the corner, rode my bike through Riverside Drive when I was ten (no helmets back then), went to the first ‘Be-In’ in Central Park. Though I’ve lived in Los Angeles for decades, my memories of New York sounds, smells, tastes, people, adventures continue to influence my poems. When I was a little girl I thought that only ‘TV families’ lived in houses. I never knew anyone with a yard, a ‘den,’ or a basement.” (website)

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