Rattle Poetry Prize

May 24, 2011

“Becoming an Island” by Tony BrusatePosted by

Tony Brusate

BECOMING AN ISLAND

Whole days evaporate. Her body
turns to sand. She could be an island beach,
her bedsheets a briny foam upon her shores.
The men of the island stand waist deep casting
their hand-tied nets toward the surf. Women on shore
sort baskets for fish. Dark naked children scamper
through the breaking waves laughing and swinging sticks.
There is no too quiet house, no dog
coming upstairs to lick her face, to see she’s still alive.
And later, no children or husband returning
from school or work, puzzled
by this, her fourth whole day in bed.
Sadder and sadder. The grains shift within her.
Can’t her family understand if they try to lift her
she will pour through their hands?
The island men pull waterlogged ropes
dragging their nets through the surf. Again and again
they reel in only seaweed, they stir up only sand.
They stare at the empty nets. They speak
in a language she would not understand but for its sorrow:
What curse is this the Gods have wrought?
How will we survive such failing take?
Doleful, the women stack the empty baskets
and start up trails toward the dark jungle.
The children grow quiet and apprehensive.
She cannot help them nor help them understand.
Outside her shuttered window, the heavy world
remains, sunlight glistening on so many waves.

—from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

__________

Tony Brusate: “‘Becoming an Island’ started with the word briny, played during a game of Scrabble while attending the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming. Special thanks to Poets & Writers magazine and the Kentucky Arts Council for helping me get to Jentel and to the good folks out there who help make art happen.”

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September 15, 2010

2010 Rattle Poetry Prize WinnersPosted by

Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the 2010 Rattle Poetry Prize:

Patricia Smith, photo by Peter Dressell

Patricia Smith
Howell, NJ
for
“Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered Tavern,“

Honorable Mentions:

Michele Battiste, Boulder, CO — “Once More, With Feeling”

Heidi Garnett, Kelowna, BC — “Sin of Unrequited Love”     

Valentina Gnup, Portland, OR — “We Speak of August”

francine j. harris, Ann Arbor, MI — “Katherine with the lazy eye. short. and not a good poet.”

Courtney Kampa, Oak Hill, VA — “Avant-garde”

Courtney Kampa, Oak Hill, VA — “The Miscarriage”

Devon Miller-Duggan, Newark, DE — “Old Blue”

Andrew Nurkin, Highstown, NJ — “The Contest”

Laura Read, Spokane, WA — “This Time We’ll Go to Kentucky Fried Chicken”

Scott Withiam, Cambridge, MA — “The Petty Snow”

The 11 winning poems will be published in Rattle #34, which releases in December 2010.

Another 12 poems were selected for standard publication, and offered a space in the open section of Rattle #35.  These poets will be notified individually about details, but they are: Amanda Auchter, Heather Bell, Christeene Fraser, Linda Gottlieb, Daniel Leamen, Alison Luterman, Megan Moriarty, and Terry Spohn, along with additional poems by Patricia Smith and Scott Withiam.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition, which would not have been a success without your diverse and inspiring poems.  We received a total of 1,697 entries and well over 6,000 poems, and it was an honor to read each of them.

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July 27, 2010

“This is the Part of the Story I’d Rather Not Tell” by Emily Kagan TrenchardPosted by

Emily Kagan Trenchard

THIS IS THE PART OF THE STORY I’D RATHER NOT TELL

how at 13 I would lay awake at night deciding
which friend or family member would have to die
so that I might be aggrieved enough to be interesting,
so that I would have the permission to become more
withdrawn and mysterious and thus, more attractive.
I’d lay awake at night, plotting who it should be, how
it should go for the maximum impact. It would have
to be something epic so that I could become a rag doll
in his arms, bury my sweet face in the meaty expanse
of his 13-year-old chest and breathe deep the scent of his
Old Spice for my consolation. My malaise would surely
cause me to lose my appetite, and thus the tragic death
of my loved one would conveniently double as a diet plan.
In the version of the story where a masked gunman
breaks into our school and holds us all hostage, I am
always able to tackle him after he gets off a few
shots. One of them hits me non-fatally in the shoulder
and my current infatuation takes off his shirt to help
staunch the bleeding. I’m not sure how the story proceeds
from there because at this point in my dream I always
began to masturbate. I had determined that certain aunts
and cousins were important, but ultimately non-essential
enough to my daily life to be suitable options. Certain friends
had also been earmarked as acceptable, and I would update
my list with god each evening, playing through the
circumstances of their death and grieving each one with
actual tears so god might see what good choices I had made.
I didn’t want him to think I had cheaped out and picked a
distant relative or a secret enemy to exchange for my love’s
fulfillment. What kind of love would that be, anyway?

When it finally happened, there was no one but the floor
to fall into. Nothing but the gasping choke for my consolation.
I wouldn’t let anyone touch me. The sacrificial loved one?
My best friend with the crooked smile and first kiss around
the corner, her mother who kissed my head like a daughter,
her father who would fetch me midnight bowls of cereal,
her sister, getting ready to start college. The epic disaster?
An exploding plane.
To whom much is given, much is expected.
I no longer speak to god.
I love like I’d kill for it.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

[download audio]

__________

Emily Kagan Trenchard: “I love poetry because it cracks the skull open in much the same way science does. It illuminates and tickles, demands discovery, and insists upon a struggle with contradiction and complexity.” (website)

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July 23, 2010

“Birthday” by Patricia SmithPosted by

Patricia Smith

BIRTHDAY

On this bed of chilled steel, I am the morning’s work,
your project after coffee and, oh yes, some woman’s son.
Whistling to break the ice in the room, you hold
most of my head in your hands. Your shaping fingers
gently adjust an ear, probe a hollow eye socket,
flick chips of dried blood away from a blown-open
hairline. No one but you and I hear as you inhale
and, without exhaling, whisper the name I once had.

Grimacing, edging slowly toward overwhelm,
you clutch the photo, glancing from the grinning grad
to the exploded boy. Now the only sound in the room
is the flat hiss of the blade as you whittle a dim smile,
free fluid from my blue mouth. You reach into your bag
and pull out a nose, a sliver of chin, a ragged scalp,
and see them as just that—a shard of skin, that scalp.
You touch with the stark slowness of a lover, but you
don’t cry out from that lover’s deep bone. Just how
did you die your soul enough to be this temporary god,
stitching conjured light into the cave of my chest?

My mother sat across from you, tangled her hands
and re-scripted my days, wailing that the bullet
was meant for someone else, not me, not me, no,
not me, and would you please make him the way he was,
as close as you can to not dead, not dead, not gone,
and you said yes. You promised she’d be able to gaze
upon me and say, with that liquid hope in her voice,
He looks like he’s sleeping. She’s the reason you carve
and paste and snip with such focus, why you snap
my bones only to reset them, why you drag a comb
through the

I can’t hear her voice anymore.
I can’t hear the bullet slicing the night toward me.
I can’t hear anything now but you,
whistling your perk past numb ritual,
stopping now and again to behold your gift
to the woman who first told you my name,
just before she handed you a picture
and begged you please, as best you can, My baby.

—from Rattle #32, Summer 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

__________

Patricia Smith: “I was living in Chicago and found out about a poetry festival in a blues club on a winter afternoon. It was just going to be continuous poetry, five hours. It was the first event in a series called Neutral Turf, which was supposed to bring street poets and academic poets together. And I thought, I’ll get some friends together and we’ll go laugh at the poets. We’ll sit in the back, we’ll heckle, it’ll be great. But when I got there, I was amazed to find this huge literary community in Chicago I knew nothing about. The poetry I heard that day was immediate and accessible. People were getting up and reading about things that everyone was talking about. Gwendolyn Brooks was there, just sitting and waiting her turn like everyone else. There were high school students. And every once in a while a name poet would get up. Gwen got up and did her poetry, then sat back down and stayed for a long time. And I just wanted to know—who are these people? Why is this so important to them? Why had they chosen to be here as opposed to the 8 million other places they could have been in Chicago?” (web)

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July 19, 2010

“Beans” by John Paul O’ConnorPosted by

John Paul O’Connor

BEANS

The way my father told the story, it wasn’t Jack who climbed
the Beanstalk. It was my sister and I. We were very,

very poor and my mother asked us to go sell the cow, whose part
my father gave to our dog, Igor. How sad I felt for my mother,

who was so desperate as to send her two young children
out into the world to bring home food for the family. Was this

why I discovered her one afternoon in her bedroom, sheer
white curtains feeding light onto her face as she wept? When we

came home with only beans to show for the cow we sold (what else
could we get for a cow that resembled a black Labrador?)

she screamed hysterically and sent us to our rooms without supper,
throwing the beans out the back door with a disillusionment

that was always with her. The narrator hid from the picture, omniscient
and absent, spending his time at the AmVet hall or at Nick’s Tavern

where he learned the art of long elaborate tales which he told only
on the occasional nights when he drank at home and we gathered

around curious to know who he was. If he were sober he stayed
behind his newspaper and called for his supper like the giant

at the top of the beanstalk, growling at his tiny wife. Had he enough
to drink, the story would continue and the giant became

what we always hoped he would; a kind soul who did good work
for the people of the kingdom. But this wasn’t a kingdom.

It was a four-bedroom house in Albuquerque in 1958 when there were
no giants, but plenty of dogs and children and drunken fathers

whose wives wept in the privacy of their afternoons and yelled
for their children at supper time. Food was on each table

and from my window I traced the long trunk of a poplar tree
to its top, where white flimsy clouds couldn’t hold a thing.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

Read by Author

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July 12, 2010

“How to Be a Cowgirl in a Studio Apartment” by Carolyn CreedonPosted by

Carolyn Creedon

HOW TO BE A COWGIRL IN A STUDIO APARTMENT

Paint the ceiling blue and let it dry. See pamphlet “How to Paint a
Ceiling.” Chalk a large circle to represent the sun. A light bulb will
do as well. Start close to the sun and trace Mercury. Trace each
planet. Finish with Pluto. Pour each color into a plastic container.
Paint each planet and the sun.
—from anonymous pamphlet, “How to Paint the Solar System on Your Ceiling”

Don’t let the people at Ace Hardware tell you you need a man.
Do pick one up anyway, if he looks red and ripe. A cowgirl needs
nourishment, and some nights, to lie on her back and let something
bloom above her, looming like the stars. A cowgirl’s hardware
is indispensable—big-spurred boots, canteen, and a saddle to go—
useful, but always that soft underbelly she won’t be revealing.
No need for the little black dress: a flannel shirt, jeans, a steaming
pan of wieners, and some bourbon. And him, over there. “Hey You!”
He’ll come over. He’ll have to. You’re a renegade, a rough ride, a rogue feeling.
Paint the ceiling blue and let it dry. See pamphlet “How to Paint a Ceiling.”

Get him there. Rein him in a little; don’t let him roam too much.
You’re well-schooled in herding. Circle him, if you must, with a lasso,
then lead him—carry him, if you must, over one shoulder—over
his objections, over a bottle of wine, to the bed. Make him docile.
Hum like a whittled banjo. It helps if you know how to pet a wild
animal, or how to rub two sticks together with your hands, or shell
peanuts husk by husk—cowgirl skills that will come in handy when
rustling up blades of grass to whistle on, or handling unpredictable
forces that scare so easily. Undo his fly. Make him rise and swell.
Chalk a large circle to represent the sun. A light bulb will do as well.

Remember, he’s borrowed, cowgirl; you don’t buy things, the stars
you ride under slide over you like yellow peanuts, the big sky just
a rented ceiling, the big sun a borrowed bulb, a giant library card
from God. The planets unmoored are not your marbles, and the warm
man you rolled with, rode and sweated with, will go back to his natural
habitat, glistening wet. This is your rule: the cowgirl’s status quo.
Bowls are only good for what they hold, branches for the scratch they
itch, stones for chalking circles of the light. Even your rope just
rings out the moon, your banjo mouth twangs out a temporary tempo.
Start close to the sun and trace Mercury. Trace each planet. Finish with Pluto.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

__________

Carolyn Creedon: “To me, writing is arranging nests of words, like wood from water for fire: slippery, porous, delicate, changeable, dangerous, breathing, barely balanced objects. I hope to spend my life doing at a lesser scale what Whitman directed for himself: making small wrecks on many fish-shaped islands. Plus, believe me—it beats the hell outta being a stripper.”

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July 8, 2010

“Crabs” by Mary-Lou Brockett-DevinePosted by

Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine

CRABS

The only thing I know
is they can crawl, swim,
and bite like hell.
—“Chas” Howard, Beautiful Swimmers

And this, then, is the wonder of evolution:
crabs cannot fly. Imagine them
with their five pairs of legs (eight for walking,
two adapted into claws) hovering over
your family picnic, piercing the skin
of your hot dog as you duck their armored
dives or working in flocks to carry off
a roasted chicken or your tabby cat. What kind
of collar would dogs wear to repel these bugs
with shells so thick it takes a hammer

to crack their claws, a hatchet to hack them
in half to bait a blackfish hook? Calico
crabs, kelp crabs, and king crabs with claws
that can reach to pinch flesh no matter where
you hold them. Box crabs, rock crabs, and spider
crabs, so wiry they could land on your head
and wrap their long legs around your chin—
their wild wings keeping tension on your jaw
as the claws try to rip off something soft. What hope
for the songbirds? Crabs in the branches

plucking featherless chicks from the nest
like oysters on the half shell. Crabs lifting lids,
picking scraps from the trash cans, clinging
to power lines, scavenging road kill, clacking up
the sides of brick buildings, the tips
of their sharp toes scraping at your screens
on August nights. Red crabs, green crabs,
blue crabs—so bright, children
will think them beautiful the way
they think flames are flowers until

they reach plump fingers to the stove. Crabs
from every ocean, eyes adapted to bright
light as they learn to live like their cousins
the land crabs—dry with only shallow puddles
to drink from—then migrating inland,
burying themselves in damp ground to rest,
waiting to spring up and grab anything
(bare toes, dog’s paw) that puts pressure
on their underground beds. Baby
crabs hatching from jellied eggs, scuttling

across sidewalks, scurrying through parking lots
into back yards and cellars, where they squeeze out
of that first shed shell, spread their new-found wings,
and fly. So tonight, as you tuck the sheet beneath
your chin, give thanks that the winged things
that draw blood tend to be small enough to crush.
That the winged things with claws tend to eat seed.
And that the crabs still cling to the rocks beneath
the water, as they wave their stiff claws above their heads
drawing slow circles around the dim and distant stars.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
2009 Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention

__________

Mary-Lou Brokett-Devine: “I was raised in a fishing family—third generation. ‘Crabs’ came out of a day on the boat as we were casting our lines with whole crabs in an attempt to catch blackfish. As I watched the crabs spinning in the air at the end of our lines, I announced, ‘We’re so lucky crabs never learned how to fly.’ The crew and my family members smiled and nodded, having adjusted over the years to having a poet in their midst. I often use poetry to connect my two worlds, and try, as an English teacher, to help high school students connect their real, physical worlds to their writing.”

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