Shannan Mann

February 24, 2023

“Your Hands” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

YOUR HANDS

Like coals they ashed me bit by bit, your hands.
The open fire thrilled me, I admit—your hands.
 
A panther only sees white food at night. It is natural,
then, that against my cheekbone you hit your hands.
 
I crumbled into the sour milk of your tears as you begged:
So deep is my pain, save me. With this ring, commit your hands.
 
You called me priestess, whore, my half, my sin, my soul.
I sang bastard, bewitcher infidel, hypocrite, your hands.
 
Great men become bone, their names given to stars, but stars too
burned when they learned how piety and lust lit your hands.
 
I unearthed my cremains from the ghats of the Ganges;
a beggar tithed me a coin, along with it, your hands.
 
I discovered a woman created in my own image. I lifted her veil.
Behind it: dead birds, zephyrs, a faded palette, your hands.
 
You said, love achieves glory when lovers take up arms.
Yet no matter what I killed I could never outwit your hands.
 
Who has not made love to beasts in wild wastelands?
Shannan, it is not gold, it is gore, it is shit: your hands.
 

—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Shannan Mann: “I wrote for several hours a day until I was 17. Then, I ran away from an abusive home and wound up in an almost-worse place. I didn’t write for 8 ½ years. After a near-death birth experience (for both my daughter and me), I was inspired to begin writing again. The first poem I wrote was for a Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge. Through that, I connected with previous challenge winner, Karan Kapoor, who encouraged me to read Agha Shahid Ali’s collection of English ghazals, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. He also challenged I write a better ghazal than the master. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come close to Shahid, but this poem is now part of a growing collection of ghazals that deal with my experience as a woman, person of colour, and a mother. All poetry is community, but the ghazal especially so. And I don’t think I’d be exaggerating one bit if I said that Rattle helped me to be a part of this community once again, long after I thought I’d exiled myself beyond return. My sincere gratitude for this magazine and every single poet who graces these pages.” (web)

Rattle Logo

February 19, 2023

“I Ask AI to Write a Poem for My Lover” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

I ASK AI TO WRITE A POEM FOR MY LOVER

and it writes me a red flag. According to science,
love enters midlife crisis at 17 months. We are
at 11. Six more months, I tell him, until
the AI poem assembled from our woe-
and-woo world prophesizes our war.
But we’re having fun with this,
we’re piecing together a breadloaf
from crumbs like fire and flower.
Change flower, K says. We scroll
through a list of color and smell,
settle on lilies, cut and paste
them beside the lonely cursor.
He claims a poem is not just
the poem but the place it came
from too. I claim annoyance
with ether, with technology
selling water by the river.
And just as we want to scrape
together a sonnet, a power
cut obliterates the WiFi,
our screen goes black, the sonnet
of ones and zeroes yawns behind
the glass. We bite our lungs shut
in the prosthetic night, kiss like snow
on windshields. Our fingers flicker
against skin, trace a minefield
of muscle along spine. Clothes
crumble. Words linger like spiders
beneath the toilet bowl,
their bowstring legs attempting
to weave a world despite
all the shit. AI wouldn’t write
shit into a love poem, he says.
Wouldn’t feel the urge I do
to write you poems, fix you
dinner, speak to you differently
in bed than I do at the table.
Your words aren’t more yours
than in a poem. You do not own
language, but these birds
on a wire are yours alone.
 

—from Poets Respond
February 19, 2023

__________

Shannan Mann: “AI is going to be next year’s Poet Laureate.” (web)

Rattle Logo

July 3, 2022

“Your Body” by Shannan MannPosted by

Shannan Mann

YOUR BODY

Voice is not enough, they want to own your body.
Chewed from flesh to blood to bone—your body.
 
Caged by crib, church, school, hospital—
ovum, tumor, bilestone—your body.
 
You learned to walk in a warzone where
your body was then shown your body.
 
Torn for god, for man, for child—those who
came to save (with thorns) have sewn your body.
 
Beauty is exile—pain, an inheritance. Encased
behind bulletproof glass—a gemstone, your body.
 
“No one will love you after forty.” The capitalist koan
to sell confidence, cologne, retinol, silicone, your body.
 
If you sulk, storm, sully their thrones for reform
they jeer like hyenas: governed by hormones, your body!
 
My bundle of cells, I named you before the vacuum claimed
you. My daughter would be motherless if I’d grown your body.
 
Lovers of life? They drill a hole through it all:
oceans, amazon, borders, ozone, your body.
 
Doctors deny; they follow the word of god. The word
made flesh underneath a headstone: your body.
 
A hundred women will be sacrificed for an unborn child.
“We want what you do, not what you are. Come, clone your body!”
 
Lillies in iron palms—ants in an abandoned house.
They ransack, as they did Sierra Leone, your body.
 
Violating divine law for dressing like a man:
burned on the stake—oh Joan—your body.
 
Whether you marry man, animal or music:
“It is only good for a moan—your body.”
 
If you’re hungry for a heart, rip out the river’s.
Say to the salmon: let me debone your body.
 
First, loving a body like your own was outlawed. Now: loving
your own body over another. Prisons, promises adorn your body.
 
You’re burning, they console the fire. When you speak,
silence sold. Truth is invisible—and as unknown, your body.
 
Indifference is more violent than outrage. Shannan, cry through
the eye of the cyclone. Fight for (you are not alone) your body.
 

—from Poets Respond
July 3, 2022

__________

Shannan Mann: “Every. Fucking. Thing.” (web)

Rattle Logo

September 30, 2021

“Griefsong Heard at Sea” by Shannan MannPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021: Editor’s Choice

 

Rosetta Stone by Emily Rankin, dolls and other items swirling in large ocean swells

Image: “Rosetta Stone” by Emily Rankin. “Griefsong Heard at Sea” was written by Shannan Mann for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Shannan Mann

GRIEFSONG HEARD AT SEA

She opens her grief as one guts a fish,
nimble and clean, a blade sheened in red.
Don’t let the ocean break you when
you cannot swim. Everyone can swim
until they drown. See, bodies bloating violet
against the surge of each wave, beating
and remembering slivers of a life held
shut like eyes flecked with dreams
of little girls gathering beached shells
under the expanse of a rhyolite sky, singing:
I am a still creature suspended in time!
I am a still creature suspended in time
under the expanse of a rhyolite sky, singing
of little girls gathering beached shells
shut like eyes flecked with dreams
and remembering slivers of a life held
against the surge of each wave, beating
until they drown. See, bodies bloating violet.
You cannot swim. Everyone can swim.
Don’t let the ocean break you, when,
nimble and clean, a blade sheened in red,
she opens her grief as one guts a fish.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2021, Editor’s Choice

__________

Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I accidentally read Shannan’s note on the poem before sitting down to compose my own, and now I’m stuck trying to find a way to explain it without repeating what she already said so eloquently. I’ll include that here. All I can add is that the palindrome form is extremely well done, with new meanings and great lines emerging from the reversal. And that I’d characterize the juxtaposition, both in the poem and in the painting, as that of a child splashing around joyfully versus adulthood’s endless struggle to stay afloat within the maelstrom of responsibility. O that we could all swim backward in time.”

Shannan Mann: “Emily’s painting filled me with what initially felt like two mutually exclusive things: a sense of playful innocence and a forlorn ache for everything lost to time. Then, as I continued to explore the artwork, I saw how these two feelings connected. Grief can make us look back and forward simultaneously, madly searching in the ocean of our memories for glimpses and pieces of an innocent time. This is also why I framed this poem as a palindrome. The past sometimes overtakes the present, filling it with grief yet in that very present we can harness the joy of the past and rise above our pain.”

Rattle Logo