francine j. harris: “I have always been somewhat nervous about this poem. When I first wrote it, it felt like a dirty little secret, something I only shared with a couple close friends. I’ve had lots of discussions about what it means to write others’ lives into your work. About what is sacred and what is exploitive. What I like about this poem is that in talking about ‘Katherine’ (which is not her real name) I figured out something about myself. In so much art which attempts to tell other people’s stories, I am often suspicious of the narrators. I want to know what their motives are. Eventually I gathered my nerve and read ‘Katherine’ at that open mike. It was well received, and afterwards, we talked about it.” (web)
Valentina Gnup: “I recently moved back to the West Coast, after living in North Carolina for six years. Something about being in a new place again had me assessing my position in life—and that is where ‘We Speak of August’ came from. I showed it to my mother, and she had a few problems with it—typically when she disapproves of one of my poems, I know I’ve done something right.” (website)
“Sin of Unrequited Love” by Heidi GarnettPosted by Rattle
Heidi Garnett
SIN OF UNREQUITED LOVE
In war there are no unwounded soldiers.
—Narosky
We had the problem of youth, the problem of desire,
our testicles pulled tight as empty purse seines,
the starved musculature of the heart.
We watched clouds move from east to west,
but with no real avidity. The sun rose and set.
We ate three meals a day, slept seven hours,
washed and shaved, listened to the radio. Mostly,
we followed orders, but some evenings desire
stalked us in musty theatres called Roxy or Empress
where we watched a film noir starring a blonde bombshell
who wore a tuxedo and sang with a voice like a grenade,
its pin pulled. She couldn’t sing worth a damn,
but who cared. She looked dangerous and life then
was all about severity, the sharp angles of cheekbones,
a white chalk outline drawn around a body,
the spasm of detonation. We said less and less
and spent our days drinking or lying in bed
and imagining our imminent deaths;
but this problem of wanting, wanting to stay, to fall in love
and plant raspberry canes, to swim to the other side of a lake
and stare at things as if they matter.
The same month that woman
went into outer space,
and I mean Judith Resnik, who died
in the Challenger a few years
later, underneath the watching eyes
of God or NASA,
another woman I didn’t really know, either,
a common woman,
crashed herself into a telephone pole
in North St. Petersburg,
because she was drunk and speeding.
And she’d had one too many at the bar.
And maybe because whatever it is
that electrifies self destructiveness
in the brain, spit-fired disaster in her, too.
And so she wanted to get it all out,
and smash it on for size
against something bigger…
Her family must’ve wondered why.
Perhaps she wanted to escape
from the night, with the coolness of closed up
shopping malls and the lonesome
ramshackle beach bum motels,
and the shadows ghosting the windows.
Maybe she hated the smoky, paneled bars,
spotted alongside the beach roads
with their endless games of darts
played by blue collar dead beats
and their sad wooden tables
littered with ashtrays and old french fries,
and their juke boxes
playing songs of heartache
for the lonesome, clinging drunks
dancing against tomorrow.
Maybe it was for the smell of smoked fish,
clinging like invisible fingers to her jeans
that made her wish
for the salt of a man to grab her
in her bed at night and comfort her,
and take away all her burdens.
And maybe, also, for the men
who’d wronged her, or had stolen love
from her.
Perhaps she drove against the small
banalities of her thoughts,
or against the ledger of her failures
that kept knocking her back
into her final insignificance,
and into the stubborn palm trees
planted to beautify a sad, aging
fisherman’s city
stuck on the Gulf of Mexico
that, because it was sad,
kept on shining
under the sun anyway.
Whatever it is that made that woman
get angry, or lonesome,
or whatever it is that made
that other woman want to fly
up into the Universe, past the earth,
I can’t really say…
But I do know that jewelry,
and men’s love, and a baby
weren’t reason enough to keep either
of them here…
We’re all astronauts.
The heart owns its terrible burdens.
The heart breaks the strings
of pearls that are its ambitions.
You could hear the crash,
and then the silence.
And then there was the eye-popping
shock that followed,
the loud snap like a door,
where the brain tells the legs to run.
Whatever else happened then,
whether it was commotion,
or the survival of her drunken soul
climbing out of the wreckage
like a torn piece of jellyfish
soaring way up high to the surface
and trying to figure out
if it had turned into a ghost
or an angel,
or some angry, electric sparkling
of her brain’s gray matter
swimming up out of bone
and into the blanched humid night,
I can’t really say.
All I remember is that the radiator
blew up.
And then there was that hissing
that tells you the smashed car,
because it’s enraged,
is about to explode.
Sometimes, because we see it,
this light, this moon,
shining above us like something
avenging something else,
like some engorged bird,
seeking shelter in a tree,
we fill in the gaps,
the hand-fills of nothingness
with whatever else there is.
I guess it’s the way we tell ourselves
what to see and what not to see.
And what to remember or to forget.
For me, I was watching
Johnny Carson with my father.
And my sister had given birth to a boy.
We’d just talked to her.
She was nursing him.
And putting him into his little bed.
And, outside, where the moon
slid behind a gravy train of clouds
and the pin sized crickets
had started up their chirruping
like a black church choir
singing at a funeral in the weedy canal
behind the apartment building,
I called an EMS
even though I knew she’d be
a goner—
because I couldn’t think of anything
better to do,
and because it was better than nothing.
I was just trying to fill in the space
with something other than shrieking—
which was all that was left,
to do.
“The Making of 1:43 PM” by Marcia LeBeauPosted by Rattle
Marcia LeBeau
THE MAKING OF 1:43 PM
Anna had Down Syndrome and was best friends with my sister
who also, not surprisingly, has Down Syndrome, too that’s the
PC way to refer to it these days.
And yes, Anna died 3 days after taking a Caribbean cruise with her mother
my sister and my mother. Four ladies on the water having the time of their
lives until Anna had a stroke on the boat and no one knew what was happening,
certainly not the jackass cruise ship doctor.
You’re wonder how old? At 26, she proclaimed she was on a diet while devouring
bags of chips. Her blood clots got bigger a drunk driver blinded
her in one eye she was the glue that held and stickied
her family. Note:
Homeward bound from the boat, airport security demanded Anna get out of her
wheelchair for frisking and wanding while her head uncontrollably rolled.
Because you asked, my neighbor is just my neighbor, a motivated guy who
has nothing in common with Anna except he’s a good person. Oh,
Jason, sweet Jason, Anna’s boyfriend for years, doesn’t have
Down Syndrome, but is slow and doesn’t understand the concept of death. He thought
her wake was a party for him because everyone slapped his back
and asked Jason, how are you doing? More
footnotes: My mom actually does talk like the italics
One Liberty Plaza in downtown Manhattan was uninhabitable after
9/11 and has nothing to do with Anna except another wacko association
I made when faced with a death at 1:43 on a Tuesday afternoon.
Anna died this afternoon
Is she unicycling
down Mt. Sunapee
weeping uncontrollably
small hands stroking
my hair, cool air
spinning the smell of
death metallic in my
mouth? They weren’t receptive to our daughters,
Marcia. The workers on Royal Caribbean
Cruise Lines were not receptive to our
daughters. My neighbor’s
smooth mahogany head shiny
with motivation and Anna
laughing she is beating my heart my
mother’s silence heavy and light
lying down tired and aching on top
of the reception counter at One
Liberty Plaza. Call security, the ballet
is too graceful. Call security, my father’s
happiness fell
into a leaf pile many years ago and Anna
called him Meatball, and Jason
sweet Jason, she is not
getting better in one
massive stroke so you
can go to the movies, we must
all get up and line dance right
out of this world.
Diana Goetsch: “In 1995, when I first wrote about the game Duck Duck Goose in ‘Recess,’ all I had was a girl who couldn’t make up her mind. Then last winter I was struck by Keira Knightly’s portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice—nearly condemned to live alone because she said no to a proposal—and I knew I needed to insert the teacher, as a troubled witness to the girl. So the poem was ten years in the making.” (web)
