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May 28, 2014

“1969” by Tony GloegglerPosted by

Tony Gloeggler

1969

My brother enlisted
in the winter. I pitched
for the sixth-grade Indians
and coach said
I was almost as good
as Johnny. My mother
fingered rosary beads,
watched Cronkite say
and that’s the way it is.
I smoked my first
and last cigarette. My father
kept his promise,
washed Johnny’s Mustang
every weekend. Brenda Whitson
taught me how to French kiss
in her basement. Sundays
we went to ten o’clock Mass,
dipped hands in holy water,
genuflected, walked down
the aisle and received
Communion. Cleon Jones
got down on one knee, caught
the last out and the Mets
won the World Series.
Two white-gloved Marines
rang the bell, stood
on our stoop. My father
watched their car
pull away, then locked
the wooden door. I went
to our room, climbed
into the top bunk,
pounded a hard ball
into his pillow. My mother
found her Bible, took
out my brother’s letters,
put them in the pocket
of her blue robe. My father
started Johnny’s car,
revved the engine
until every tool
hanging in the garage
shook.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
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__________

Tony Gloeggler: “I’m not sure I ever wanted to be a writer or poet—in most ways I feel poetry is elitist and no one I grew up with or work with reads it and too often I can’t convince myself that they’re missing something important. I think writing poetry is just another of those things that always makes me feel like I don’t quite fit in. Like when I was a four-year-old and wore this big heavy leg brace and a huge Frankenstein boot on the other or when I was a superstar schoolyard jock with hair down to my ass or when I was a long hair and never touched any drugs or when I’m the only Caucasian in the group home where I work or I’m a poet who perfectly understands why hardly anyone reads poetry or needs to. Still, I write poetry and it matters a lot to me. I write for myself, though I would love to have a lot of people read my work. But mostly I feel at home when I’m writing, like I’m doing one of the things I’m supposed to do and when I get it right, when a poem is done and I can tell it’s good, well, it just lifts me. It makes me fool myself into believing that I was the only one who could do this, make this poem, and it’s one of those times when sticking out or standing out is all good.” (web)

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April 29, 2011

“End of Season” by Julie GoldmanPosted by

Julie Goldman

END OF SEASON

Washed and dried, my laundry smells “Spring Fresh,”
but to touch, it’s cooling, like autumn.
I fold tank tops, T-shirts, shorts. And last, the yellow sleeveless

button-down I wore over my bathing suit (like the tan, form-
fit model in the mail-order catalogue, who
sat on the sand while the others swam).

Fastening every other shirt button in the row,
I admire the straight and even
stitches that hold the body together. No

loose ends. I spread this vestige of my last summer, face down
on the table, and while ironing
its lifeless, limbless back with flat, heavy palms,

let the illusion of reverse aging
materialize, the wrinkles
disappear. Like a soldier folding the flag,

I fold the shirt lengthwise,
from right shoulder to hip: the margin
narrows like the doctor’s prognosis.

Along the left fold, the breast pocket outlines
the mastectomy site. The final fold cuts
across the width, where the latest CAT scan

reports increasing tumor activity. The folded shirt goes with the rest,
face up in a storage box that smells of cedar, like a casket.

—from Rattle #25, Spring 2006
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April 24, 2011

“The Atheist’s Tunnel” by Lisa GlattPosted by

Lisa Glatt

THE ATHEIST’S TUNNEL

A woman in a bright yellow coat wraps the cuff around my arm and asks me first about headaches, and then about cramps, and then about my mother, dead early from breast cancer, which makes me just a tad more interesting than the young women here whose mothers are still breathing. It’s my first visit since she died, and the woman wants to know how I feel, do I feel OK. She remembers I lived with my mother while I wrote and nursed at once. I didn’t nurse, I say, I was a miserable bitch in the next room, I was what my mother called a bummer, but she’s not listening anymore, this cheerful woman dressed up like a flower. She’s leading me into the examining room, where teddy bears and buttercups line the walls, where a three-foot picture of Santa hangs even though it’s April. I’m in that paper robe, leaning back into position, wondering about Santa’s perseverance when the doctor enters. He wants to know my mother’s age, which breast, and I’m surprised when I say left, not because I know it, but because it’s there on my tongue, and then I’m moving toward him, and I’m thinking that it’s a wonderful thing my love and I don’t have sex on a table like this, that he doesn’t see me in this light, that he doesn’t peer in with sticks and tools. Just then the doctor pipes up, saying my cervix looks great, and he says this with such enthusiasm that I suddenly see my cervix made up for the prom, lipstick and blush, a pink glow that speaks of health and wellbeing. He wants to talk about life and death, about heaven, and I’m wincing, not because the speculum is cold, but because I know how unpopular my beliefs are, even here among these scientists, so I say nothing as the doctor chatters on about his own dead mother. Oh I understand how you feel. I was just thirty when my mother died, but I believe in God, you must believe in God, you do believe in God? he says, his head popping up from between my knees, and I see him, a believer in latex gloves, a balding orphan in bright light. I force a smile and he returns to my crotch. You must believe in heaven, he continues, talking right at it. I’m certain that when mama went she went into a tunnel, a beautiful tunnel, he says, at the exact moment his finger is scooting into my ass.

—from Rattle #25, Spring 2006
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April 19, 2011

“The Raid” by Ronald AlexanderPosted by

Ronald Alexander

THE RAID

The jail cell is cold
and crowded with queens.
Leather queens in tight pants,
transvestites in gowns,
preppies in baggy sweaters,
khaki pants, and blazers
with crests.
I sit in the corner
on the concrete floor and
watch the effeminate one
prancing back and forth
and yelling,
I’m sorry officer.
I’m sorry I’m a faggot.
I’m sorry I suck dick.
A young, fat cop
rakes his billy club
across the bars and
screams for him to shut up
before he gets something
in his mouth he doesn’t like.
I smile for a minute
then remember the television
cameras that watched while
the police herded us
from the bar.
The films will show us
being led in handcuffs
into the paddy wagons
like the man who has killed
his wife and kids,
like the man who
embezzled from his employer,
like the man who abducted
a child and left her
in a ditch.
I look at the fingerprint ink
on my hands and wonder if
the stain will wash off
now that I’ve been caught
in a place where
men dance with men.

—from Rattle #25, Spring 2006
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