Summer
2004
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Summer
2004
| Rochelle Ratner: Four
Poems (1) |
| WAITING TO CLIMB
THE BONSAI |
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Like waiting for her turn at the slide. All the other
boys and girls are lined up, laughing, anxious. She
tries to hold her breath, smooths down her dress, prays
her panties don’t show. She’s waiting to
be the tomboy Daddy wanted. But she’s small for
her age. Slides and swings and monkey bars are so enormous.
Climb a tree? Not even if she had
to get the overstuffed cat down. That’s when Grandma
comes over with the small and absolutely perfect Bonsai
tree, bought cheap at the end of a street fair. This
is worse than the seesaw, worse than the motionless
white swan on the carousel. She grabs the dusty and
moldy stuffed cat and runs to hide under the bed with
it.
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| Rochelle Ratner:
Four Poems (2) |
| FLAG |
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She’s given a little blue and white Israeli
flag to wave at the demonstration. Perched on
Daddy’s shoulders, she waves it waves it
waves it waves it waves it. Then Daddy sets her
down. She’s too heavy to carry, he tells
her. Maybe later. But that maybe doesn’t
appease her. Angry, she starts to run off, falls
down, scrapes her knee, presses the flag against
it to sop up the blood. It’s a red white
and blue flag now. Daddy kisses her knee and tells
her how brave she is.
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| Rochelle Ratner:
Four Poems (3) |
| NEW HEIGHTS |
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After nosebleed on a high high high high floor
of the new highrise Holiday Inn the Haitian housekeeper,
who saw the white-haired couple in their sixties
leave the room, his arm tight around her, her
eyes following the trail of the vacuum on the
carpet, sees the pillow moved to the center of
the bed, and thinks oh my God, a virgin!
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| Rochelle Ratner:
Four Poems (4) |
| MEN ARE
FROM MARS |
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It was the 1950s when she attended Hebrew school,
the middle of the cold war and the race for outer
space. They used a series of workbooks called
Rocket to Mars, probably somewhere in her parents’
attic. But she grew to hate Hebrew school, and
was never bat mitzvahed. She might never have
married, either
********************************************
Her seventh grade teacher lived next door to
a man who set up telescopes in the middle of the
street. She remembers stopping there with her
father as a child, before she’d met this
teacher, before she grew up, before her father
retired, before he took sick, before her mother
died. He was interested in the heavens then. Tonight
he says he read about Mars in the news, thought
maybe he spied it through the car window
********************************************
In the dark, alone, she searches the skies for
that glowing reddish light three days early. Just
in case she misses it. But her eyes need time
to adjust. At first not even the big dipper’s
visible. But maybe it’s too early. She goes
inside to get warm, vowing to return in an hour.
********************************************
Think of the mar that is marriage. They thought
she’d never marry. Then she met him. The
old problem solver, accustomed to doing things
on his own, who doesn’t need her help and
yet doesn’t reject it. Call it love, not
help. At 6:00 a.m. this year, on the very morning
of his birthday, Mars will be closer to earth
than it’s ever been before. But he’s
not some little green man. Like it or not, she’s
from New Jersey. And she won’t be with him.
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| Rochelle
Ratner's latest poetry book, House and Home, was
published in Fall 2003 by Marsh Hawk Press. Two
poetry e-chapbooks, Tellings (2002) and Lady Pinball
(2003) were published by Tamafyhr Mountain Press,
and Sugar Mule magazine recently devoted a full
issue to her writing. Coffee House Press has published
two novels: Bobby's Girl (1986) and The Lion's Share
(1991). An anthology she edited, Bearing Life: Women=s
Writings on Childlessness, was published in January
2000 by The Feminist Press. She lives in New York
City, where she is Executive Editor of American
Book Review, reviews regularly for Library Journal,
and is on the editorial board of Marsh Hawk Press.
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