April 2021 Issue

Contents

Editors Note

“Honeyed” by Tessa A. Adams
(Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge—Poetry)
“Before it’s Gone” by K.B. Ballentine
(3Elements—Poetry)
“Slow, Brief Watch” by K.B. Ballentine
(3Elements—Poetry)
“Reflection” by Julia Travers
(Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge—Poetry)
“Cosmological Theorizing on Jackson St.” by Carson Pytell
(Notebooking Daily—Poetry)
“The Threefold Path” by Frances Klein
(Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge—Poetry)
“The Comment Section” by Frances Klein
(Rattle Poets Respond—Poetry)

“Honeyed” by Tessa A. Adams

_{Public Domain photo of Roald Amundsen stylized by Zebulon Huset}

Honeyed

I can still hear him in the candy coat of winter.
His voice honeyed by time.
I am reminded of how I found a home in his harsh,
a past in his posture,
and a future in the light of his eyes.
“They don’t make his kind of man anymore”
His sugar—the kind that crusts—
can be found in the evening of my memory
Toasted on the fire and blackened in the heat.

I sink my teeth into the thought of how one day,
when we meet, I can tell him how delicious he made
our lives, and how his forever sprinkles possibilities
that tumble each time we taste his name on our tongues.

by Tessa A. Adams
Tessa A. Adams is a graduate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a Master’s in reading. She is a language arts and creative writing teacher in Omaha, Nebraska in the United States. She is the co-author of the blog www.familyfootnote.com, and she has three children. When she is not mothering or teaching, she is writing. Her work can be found in Fine Lines Literary Journal, Empty Sink Publishing, Route 7 Review, THAT Literary Review, Sammiches and Psychmeds, xoJane, and Parent.co.

NEXT PIECE: “Before it’s Gone” by K.B. Ballentine

On This Piece

This image reminded me of my grandfathers. My past and my family’s future is wrapped up in the foundation they provided us. I see the work ethic they instilled in my parents and my aunts come through in my children. Life is sweeter because of what they worked for before they even knew my children would benefit from it. That’s why I named it “Honeyed”. It’s a slow kind of sugar to have had them in my life. It’s the kind that sticks, and I am thankful for their candy-coated sacrifices.

This piece was sparked by the prompt for Rattle’s December 2020 Monthly Ekphrastic Challenge (read the winner here). This is the assigned image: “Old” by Dominique Dève.

If you would like to show the writer your gratitude for putting this piece into the world you can ‘buy the writer a coffee’ and send them a suggested $3 donation here. Be sure to mention that it’s for writing the awesome piece in your note. Writers very rarely hear that people like their writing, so tell them!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ReadersChoiceNomination.jpg

If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination. Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.

“Before It’s Gone” by K.B. Ballentine

Before it’s Gone

When color comes and the hum of bees
slides like honey into the forest,
the leaves are full of news. Crows wait
in the canopy, brooding and silent
as wind severs acorns, splinters husks,
and chipmunks sprint from grass to shrubs
then back again. Cooler, these mornings –
hibiscus and azalea faded
like a memory just out of reach,
a rosé left to sour – when the ghost
of past fires urge a reawakening.
The chimes out back sing feverishly.
A nuthatch loops the pine, eyes focused
on the almost-invisible of these days.

by K.B. Ballentine
KB Ballentine’s seventh collection, Edge of the Echo, launches in May with Iris Publishing Group. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017). Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

NEXT PIECE: “Slow, Brief Watch” by K.B. Ballentine

This piece was sparked by the prompt for 3Elements Issue 29: Loop, Ghost, Hibiscus.

“Slow, Brief Watch” by K.B. Ballentine

Slow, Brief Watch

We thought spring had come early,
but crocus and robin roused false hope.

Now dusk brushes the city,
shadows the violet of nightshade,

as snow confettis the grass, the streets
until white silence settles.

After the confusion of this week, a surprise
of softness,
like the kitten we discovered

in the back of the truck, mother gone,
twin already cold. Her mewl so thin

we almost missed it. We washed, fed her
milk with an eye dropper.
She loved
to curl near my neck, on your chest.

But the chambers of her lungs
were like cotton fluff. Not enough breath

for one short life.

Stillness deepens, more comfort than we thought,
as night winds closer, a lavender mantle

where streetlights and headlamps echo
the mounding snow.

NEXT PIECE: “Reflection” by Julia Travers

This piece was sparked by the prompt for the most recent (as of yet unpublished) 3Elements Issue 31: Confetti, Nightshade, and Chamber.

“Reflection” by Julia Travers

Reflection

When she clapped
the world split into halves.

Birds flew into a cerulean blush
above and below the horizon.

She used this trick to distract the hungry
who gathered at her water’s edge.

I wondered at her hands and feet,
the twin landscapes she carved.

Cloud or cloud’s bright shadow?
Tree or reflection of tree?

I could never tell which was which.
I could never choose.

I became so busy tracing each arm
as it bent into the sky,

I didn’t realize she was gone.

by Julia Travers
Julia Travers (she/her) is a writer, artist and teacher in Virginia, U.S.A. She grew up near the Chesapeake Bay and lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She writes poetry, fiction, essays and news. Her creative works are published with Short Édition, Fish Publishing, Bowery Poetry, Rattapallax, On Being/ American Public Media, Ecological Citizen and others. Find her work at juliatravers.journoportfolio.com, Twitter @traversjul.

NEXT PIECE: “Cosmological Theorizing on Jackson St.” by Carson Pytell.

This piece was sparked by the prompt for Rattle’s December 2020 Monthly Ekphrastic Challenge (read the winner here). This is the assigned image: “Cloud Dance” by Claire Ibarra.

“Cosmological Theorizing on Jackson St” by Carson Pytell

Cosmological Theorizing on Jackson St.

My attention snagged by a Pop!
First sight: a parasol. The day, stormy,
the fabric thin as patience and floral,
dragged by wind as though leashed to it.

Feet from the eye-catching flutter:
an elderly woman in a fur coat collapsing
and man sprinting into an alleyway
wearing a white T and blue jeans.

Maybe he couldn’t afford insulin or dope,
or she just couldn’t stand it nowadays;
they were sitting alone at opposite ends
of a car on the L-train when it happened.

Revolver out of pocket for efficiency
he menaced the legged pawnshop in back,
but her sky-old decorum refused. She steamed
and tucked her pocketbook under her arm.

In town only to buy more porcelain cherubs
she whipped out a parasol and atomized him
as though the criminal herself, pursued him
into the street. Where he stopped. Ended

the chase. And, ya know, it wasn’t so much
a pop that I heard, now that I see blood
pooling, the parasol swept away, but more like
the bang which chanced open the universe.

by Carson Pytell
Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, NY whose work has appeared widely online and in print, including in Ethel Zine, Perceptions Magazine, Rabid Oak, Backchannels and White Wall Review, among others. He participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project in December 2020 and his first two chapbooks, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020), are now available. His third, The Gold That Stays (Cyberwit Publishing, 2021), is forthcoming.

NEXT PIECE: “The Threefold Path” by Frances Klein.

This piece was sparked by the Notebooking Daily prompt 2021 Writing Exercise Series #49: Beginning, Middle & End 6.

“The Threefold Path” by Frances Klein

The Threefold Path
After James Croal Jackson’s photograph “Go Your Own Way”

I

Serpentine stairs, silk
shrouded, speakeasy-secret:
basement bordello.

If I had ever seen Russian nesting dolls in my west Texas
village, I would have pictured them: basement upon sub-basement opening to
reveal, at their center, my only son. By that time he was already the
ninth most dangerous man in Dallas.

II

The vessel moves. I,
the water within, move too.
All glass, silver, steel.

When I stepped out onto the highest floor—I, who had never
lived in a home with stairs, saw the whole of the city prostrated at my feet—the
assistants of my only son averted their eyes, gazes grazing hardwood. By that
time he had all the power.

III

Black, barren-basalt,
negative space below sky
white as dementia.

I am too old for this place. Too old to follow in the
footsteps of countless supplicants, the heat of their need melting a path of
glass to my only son. We forget that sages have mothers. That they were once
small boys hiding in the cotton fields from bedtime, or the switch. All we see
is the man surrounded by piles of meagre offerings:

folded paper boat,
a frayed piece of woven thread,
half eaten loquat.

But this sage does not have a mother. By that time a woman
had already brought him a shoe
so old, she could pass a stone through the lace hole and it
wouldn’t be broken.

by Frances Klein
Frances Klein is a high school English teacher. She was born and raised in Southeast Alaska, and now lives in Indianapolis. She has been published in So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Vonnegut Memorial Library and Tupelo Press, among others. Readers can find her work at https://kleinpoetryblog.wordpress.com/.

NEXT PIECE: “The Comments Section” by Frances Klein.

On This Piece

My experiences writing these two pieces were very different. “The Threefold Path” was written after taking a lot of time to view the image, think about what I thought might be happening outside the frame, and then write, rewrite, and revise before coming to the final version. “The Comments Section,” in contrast, was written in about half an hour in a blind fury after seeing news reports that my state was going to prioritize smokers over teachers in vaccine administration. This is consistent with my experience with writing prompts: some take a lot of thought and deliberation, while others spark an immediate fiery response.

This piece was sparked by the prompt for Rattle’s June 2016 Monthly Ekphrastic Challenge (read the winner here). Inspired by the image “Go Your Own Way” by James Croal Jackson

“The Comments Section” by Frances Klein

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Reflection-image-966x1024.jpg — _{Photo by Kunal Baroth}

The Comments Section*

Listen, Indiana,
the scrape of sparkwheel against thumb
is a strictly statistical risk.
Flames burn diligently
along the length of the cigarette,
trying to kill themselves
in the tobacco-packed tip.

Listen: in Indiana
teachers are burned down
by the low probability of spreading
higher learning stacked against the high probability
of collapsing into ash.
Most days I feel like an old photo
with a burn blooming in the center,
held together only at the corners.

Listen, Indiana, a few questions:
In the United States should it be harder
to get a cigarette than a gun?

In the United States should it be harder
to get a gun than an education?

In the United States should it be easier
to shoot the potential out of small bodies
than to shoot vaccines into educators?

Listen, Indiana claims
that the sheep lie down
with the addicts and alcoholics,
each clutching their preference
like it might be gone in an instant:
for the smoker the cigarette,
for the drinker the drink,
for the teacher the deep breath,
the distribution of oxygen to each
blood vessel and extremity
from a centralized location.

Listen, Indiana:
I am tired.
From here at the bottom of this well
I can hear those at the top call down—
they say wait
they say most important job
they say priority, obviously,
they say first in line
after all the other lines have gone—
while all around me rotten moss
grows as thick as the smoke
from the last cigarette in the pack.

*All words culled from comments made on the Newsweek article “Smokers in Indiana Can Obtain COVID Vaccine Before Teachers Due to Change in State Guidelines” and the Wishtv.com article “Indiana Smokers Gain Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Waitlist”

NEXT PIECE: Nope. Not until next month. Write new pieces and send them in!

On This Piece

This piece was sparked by the prompt for Rattle’s Poets Respond which is to write a poem about a piece in the news during that week. It is running every week, so do yourself a favor, read some news and keep yourself open to creative inspiration.

Editor’s Note:

It’s National Poetry Month, baby! And we have almost twice as many pieces as last month, all poetry for your faces. I know that it’s old hat to say time flies, so I’ll instead focus on how the community continues to grow. This month we have a piece of innovative poetry from Frances Klein that was composed from the comment sections of news articles for Rattle Poets Respond, pieces from prompts as far back as 2016, and as recent as the as-yet unpublished 3Elements. As. Once more: As. Now that that’s out of my system, Let’s keep digging up those old prompts for new pieces, rummaging out old pieces that hadn’t gotten published yet and might use fresh eyes and a a new coat of paint or tuning. I’m exciting to read your poetry and prose for the new issue, which has already started taking shape!

2 Comments