Claim OwnershipRattle: Poetry
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… without pretension since 1995.
674 Episodes
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The mountains here feel like they’d rather be elsewhere,
so ground down at this point they look like hills.
Hate to call a mountain a hill and erase
the promise of smoothing this view,
this time span, these mumbled
ranges could offer us. Continue reading →
While we tussle with thoughts of Elon Musk, of Earth,
the Moon and Mars, our particles adrift——
the stars and satellites that light our paths—— Continue reading →
I never noticed the tag sewn discretely
behind my knee. I guess my mother
was afraid to clip it off. Maybe she thought
“Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law” Continue reading →
The horizon rebuffed
our hopes.
She stopped going outside.
Her bedroom blinds
became tourniquets
tightening light to slits. Continue reading →
It’s February and already
I’ve overspent my budgeted bewilderment
for the year, most of it on deep & constant
sorrow: war, deportations, deployments, hatred
forged into policy, theft, dead phone lines
and locked doors.
Continue reading →
Yesterday my husband bought a Lincoln Town Car.
As we were driving to pick it up he said how it was once
the longest car in America. Sometimes I don’t have to imagine
what he’ll be like when he’s old. Continue reading →
At the rink, they whoosh, these little bundled
Beings, their scarves graffitiing the air
My daughter weaving among them, her long legs
Pumping, the bright pink kitty earmuffs, a blur
Continue reading →
The workmen over and above the fence
fit bricks, lift mortar, slap it accurately
in place. Guilty by sitting idle, I
imagine they envy my luxury
of doing nothing until I remember Continue reading →
Those for whom no ritual applies,
no text supplies the purpose of a day,
no day becomes the rock on which we stand,
no angel trumpets guidance from a star,
no star determines who we really are Continue reading →
Image: “Self-Portrait as a Prep School Llama” by James Valvis. “The Boardroom at the Edge of the Field” was written by Caiti Quatmann for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. Continue reading →
When they come, they bring the fearful dark,
like English majors looking for work,
feather-caped, bare-faced in red or black.
Continue reading →
When I tell the story of your return,
you are the supplicant and I
the forgiving queen. But in that year
before you blew back into my life
like a late spring snow— Continue reading →
Praise deep mineral veins under rich dirt,
and fossilized remains of dinosaurs turning themselves into gas
for our benefit. Praise the exhausted earth,
miles and miles of subsidized corn
and cattle lowing from their hell-holes
in automated milking barns.
Continue reading →
Image: “Self-Portrait as a Prep School Llama” by James Valvis. “The Grass Ceiling” was written by Kevin West for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. Continue reading →
I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.
Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.
Love the game room and those herbal teas.
Everyone remembers Betty Grable. Continue reading →
The cicadas get one day to sing, mate
having lived seventeen-years underground
as grubs, that’s a long time for heaven’s sake,
too little for light or to fool around. Continue reading →
The night is full of insomniacs googling insomnia. Some of my friends are trying Dry January. Dryuary. Others are sober curious. There’s a mock cocktail called a Phony Negroni. It’s made with non-alcoholic gin. Phony Negroni. Phony baloney. When I was eight, my brother and I were walking by a house in our neighborhood when suddenly a slab of baloney sailed through the air and stuck to a chain link fence. Continue reading →
She gives me the wine
and I take the wine.
I mop her floors
and she walks on them
while they’re still wet Continue reading →
hey girl/ so I keep taking Milo to the pool/ he’s on the swim team now/ level one/ he’s still learning to blow bubbles and float and breathe/ while he swims I swim/ freestyle and breaststroke and butterfly/ and/ I’m learning to breathe too/ Continue reading →
my young mother becomes my dead mother
my new car becomes a clunker
my blond hair becomes gray,
my favorite sweater, a rag
my beloved becomes my enemy
my enemy, someone I can’t remember Continue reading →
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