Sonnets

February 15, 2024

“Costume” by Jessica MollPosted by

Jessica Moll

COSTUME

Our game’s a cross between A Chorus Line
and Fame. Rehearsals, here in our backyard.
Pretend the lawn’s the stage. The tutu’s mine,
but I let David pick a leotard.
I’m ten, he’s five, he’s used to all my rules.
He gets to be a girl, but has to choose
a neutral name like “Chris.” Summer fog rolls
in. We swirl our glitter scarves to music
in our heads. He’s got it down, the girl
pose: hips, hands. He’s not a boy. He won’t play
out front, racing Big Wheels. Instead, he twirls
barefoot with me. But what about the place
my fingers found, underneath my clothes?
The grass is cold. Plié. And point your toes.
 

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________

Jessica Moll: “Since I just wrote a sonnet yesterday, today I’d like to rest. My fingers ache from tapping syllables against the desk. I haven’t slept—the loud iambic tick’s a clock inside my head. I hate the task I give myself, of cramming my mind’s sprawl into the structure of a formal poem. I think the next time that a sonnet calls, I won’t answer. I’ll pretend I’m not home. But watch, tomorrow I’ll be riding down a pitted Oakland street, pedaling hard to get to work on time, and as I spin, I’ll feel the meter in my pulse and start to think in rhyme. You’ve had this kind of lover—as soon as you break up, you’re back together.”

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February 8, 2024

“The Ghost of Frank O’Hara” by John YohePosted by

John Yohe

THE GHOST OF FRANK O’HARA

The ghost of Frank O’Hara taps me on
the shoulder whispering
and what about
the humor what about talks with the sun
and things that happen at the movies out
of sight of parents don’t forget the thirst
of being in Manhattan in the heat
and Coke the drink
remember too your first
love passion music though it might not come out
in words it’s there in you but I was sad
and said what good is humor in a poem
when people die Manhattan Fire Island
we
bought falafels which we thought weren’t bad
and walked to Central Park for space and some
children were laughing and he said ask them

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________

John Yohe: “I wrote this poem in late 2001 or early 2002, and found working within a form helped me say things I wouldn’t have normally said. I had been thinking about the 9/11 attacks, wondering how Frank O’Hara would have responded and, in the same way he talked to the sun, I decided to talk to him. The phrase ‘the ghost of Frank O’Hara’ was in iambic, the rest of the poem sort of flowed out.” (web)

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June 17, 2023

“Gabriella” by Peter CoghillPosted by

Peter Coghill

GABRIELLA

My little niece rakes leaves, then runs full tilt
into the pile, busting them up all over—
with joy and guilt, and joy sprung from that guilt,
she kicks and clouts about until they cover
the grass again. A two-year-old Godzilla
on the front lawn, reveling in a power
so new and physical. A last patch fills her
arms and she flings a red and golden shower—
of words. For that is how she talked as well,
with wonder at our comprehending her,
a welter, like the spray of leaves that fell
from her throw, and caught the sun as tongues of fire.
Inspiration on the shaggy wind
of autumn—soon to be swept up and binned.
 

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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_________

Peter Coghill: “I’m a physicist by profession, and math was my first love, followed by the outdoors. One droughty summer when the parks were closed by fire it was time for second loves and strangely I found myself reading and writing poetry (Louis MacNeice and Carol Ann Duffy, I just loved her). Something that was a complete surprise to me, and my wife. From there it has only grown.”

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May 20, 2023

“The Heart, Like A Bocce Ball” by Luke JohnsonPosted by

Luke Johnson

THE HEART, LIKE A BOCCE BALL

The jack sits low in the grass. We’re dead drunk,
cannonballing across the lawn, gouging
handful divots, each of us still nursing
a tumbler of scotch brought home from the wake.
We sons and brothers and cousins. I spin
my ice and let that black-tie loosening
buzz swarm. The others choose the sky, looping
pop-flies that swirl with backspin, an earthen
thud answering grunts while the soft dirt caves.
I bowl instead, slow-ride hidden ridges—
the swells buried beneath the grass—carving
a curve, a line from start to stop, finish.
The heart, like a bocce ball, is fist-sized
and firm; ours clunk together, then divide.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________

Luke Johnson: “Recently, I spent the summer living in a tent in the woods of West Virginia. Nights, I read poetry by headlamp: James Galvin, Elizabeth Bishop, Fred Chappell. Rain storms drummed tarps strung above me, and the poems joined those rhythms, those gales. I’d like to believe they’re equally necessary, poetry and rain, with the same capacity to ease and to overwhelm.” (web)

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January 28, 2023

“The Romance of Middle Age” by Mary MeriamPosted by

Mary Meriam

THE ROMANCE OF MIDDLE AGE

Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showers
at night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swim
in cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hours
and days and decades, head to foot, and slim
is just a faded photograph. It’s strange
how people look away who once would look.
I didn’t know I’d undergo this change
and be the unseen cover of a book
whose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker.
One reaches for the pleasures of the mind
and heart to counteract the loss of quicker
knowledge. One feels old urgencies unwind,
although I still pluck chin hairs with a tweezer,
in case I might attract another geezer.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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___________

Mary Meriam: “Since I am the voice of a violet crushed by soldiers’ boots, I write poems. Since I am the last living passenger out of a subway disaster, I write poems. Since I am a wet quark in a dry universe, I write poems. Since I am a lover’s dream of her love, I write poems.” (web)

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January 14, 2023

“Freedom” by Elizabeth Klise von ZerneckPosted by

Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck

FREEDOM

Haight Street

The realtor claimed the flat was lived in once
by Janis Joplin, a quite common claim,

we later learned. The tactic worked on us.
We learned to overlook—that hint of fame!—

the smell of gas, an awkward floor plan, soot
that never scoured. We dwelled not there but on

our plum address and, when fall came, we bought
dark Goodwill coats, the nights much colder than

we had foreseen. Through that long year, we read
Jacques Derrida, and smoked, and grew fresh thyme

on the one sill with light. We baked wheat bread—
well, one loaf anyway—and drank red wine,

and each day died a bit—twenty, confused—
two other words for nothing left to lose.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________

Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck: “I used to write fiction, and the first line of this poem was one I had in my head for years as the first sentence of a story. Nothing came of it. When I started to write poetry, I recalled the line—iambic, after all—and the poem followed quickly, almost as if it wrote itself. It knew what it wanted to be more than I did.”

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August 10, 2021

“The Circus of Inconsolable Loss” by Wendy Taylor CarlislePosted by

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

THE CIRCUS OF INCONSOLABLE LOSS

There is only one ring for those sweating horses with the preternaturally
flat backs and the fat smooth rumps from which ladies
                                                                      in stained tights vault onto the sawdust
                                                                                                              or another horse.

Only one ring for the hung-over clowns and their Volkswagen,
a car so old it must be pushed into the one ring
        which is also the one for the acrobats and the tigers and contortionists
                                                                         and dogs that walk on their hind legs,

then stop to scratch their necks, itchy under spangled ruffs. Above them
wire walkers and trapeze guys swing,
                                                                 mayfly-graceful. Under them the one ring
                                               reminds the audience to celebrate, each in their own

constrained and special way,
the emptiness they’ve come to in the spaces where other rings should be.

—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________

Wendy Taylor Carlisle: “This poem was a gift from the circus backyard in my head where a population of freaks and wire walkers, butchers and roustabouts, folks who work animals, a ringmaster and Tom Thumb are careful to keep the elephant’s trunk up for the photograph, don’t whistle in the dressing room and never look back when marching in a parade. The poem arrived about a year ago, the form later. I write poetry because I can’t help it. Given the choice, I’d be a magician, a jockey, or a diamond cutter.” (web)

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