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Spotlight: Summercamp Sirens / Days Like This / Rattlesnake

October 25, 2015/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2015 / Rena Rossner

Summercamp Sirens

When cities are burning
and children sleep in your bed
you can’t measure suffering
like sugar, one tablespoon
at a time. Mornings are full
of orange juice and hope
and getting out the door
to camp and watering flowers
walking as if you forgot
that there’s a war on
and that hairstyles
and nailpolish
can get territorial,
and games like Catan
are played on the ground.
We find insects smashed
between pages of books
we read to stop remembering
and find acorns on windowsills
thimbles too big to protect
even thumbs. You snap
pictures, nails, tempers.
You have cornstarch dreams
tinted with food color.
Your lips move as you read
headlines and you spell
everything: hate, bodies,
soldiers, rockets, fear.
But you can’t spell sirens
language is heavy as feathers
and you wonder why the birds
don’t burst.


Days Like This

When you hear that a rocket fell
make black coffee, dark and sweet.
When you hear that a soldier died
bake cookies, then eat them all.
When you look outside your window
watch for birds, they know everything.
When you lose power and it’s dark
make love, even to yourself.
If you love a fruit
you cut it open.
Sometimes snakes
eat their own tails.
And forests grow
in the strangest places:
over graves and under tunnels.
Children ask what these words mean:
Hamas: I tell them anger
Siren: I tell them song
Tunnel: I tell them water
Soldier: I tell them dream
This is how we learn to forgive.


Rattlesnake

mid-July but it feels
like August when the rains
don’t come and the air
is filled with the smell
of animal death and sand
when iced drinks melt
faster than you can drink
them and everything sweats
bullets, dread, fear
everyone gets a chance
at forgiveness but not
in this heat, it leaves
no room for change
for different maps
everyone knows everyone
and yet
we fight
and spit
and cry
and break hearts
nightly.
Our children learn
to fire shotguns
and wring chicken necks
like hands just to put
an end to suffering
still
I love this place
beautiful and cracked
where every leaf reminds
us, and neighbors’ fights
take the shape of rockets
falling, I could be any
where, staring at the sky
and driving down the endless
asphalt, listening to malls
and indifference, but I’m still
in love, and the grass reminds
me, parched and dry, that
wildflowers make the sound
of a thousand tiny stars

 

Rena_Rossner_optRena Rossner is a graduate of the Writing Seminars program at The Johns Hopkins University. She also holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin and McGill University. She currently works as a literary and foreign rights agent at The Deborah Harris Agency in Jerusalem, Israel. Her poetry and short fiction has been published or is forthcoming from Carve Magazine, Midwest Quarterly, The Mayo Review, Rattle, Chicago Literati, Arc 23, JewishFiction.net and more. Her cookbook, Eating the Bible, has been translated into 5 languages and is published by Skyhorse Press. Her first novel is out on submission.

 

 

 

 

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Amuse-Bouche Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/paul-volkmer-qVotvbsuM_c-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1704 2560 Sanaz Tamjidi https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sanaz Tamjidi2022-12-16 16:12:142022-12-16 16:12:14The Night I Want to Remember

From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ECD45731-BD0A-4144-9DDE-DBE45519C4A6.jpeg 2461 1882 Michaela Emerson https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Michaela Emerson2023-03-03 23:45:542023-03-04 00:06:21Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/jason-briscoe-VBsG1VOgLIU-unsplash-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-10-07 23:55:352022-10-07 19:31:09Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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