It wouldn’t be so bad if the snake weren’t so fucking loud. Did it have to be a rattle snake? Were they this unsettling on purpose? Clearly that was why the rattles existed. To make the most fucked up creatures on earth even more fucked up and intimidating. Shelby just stared the thing down, fully aware of the fact that snakes could probably hypnotize you and you probably shouldn’t like, look them in the eye or something.
Sarah
sometimes when I was younger the baby would use his rattle to communicate with me. One shake meant he was hungry. Two and I knew he had to go to the restroom. I guess I always worried when there wasn’t a rattle. I knew something was wrong when I couldn’t hear the marbles or whatever was packed inside it, shaking from a room away. I miss that old thing.
Joseph
One of my greatest fears about hiking in the Appalachian Mountains was the possibility of hearing a distant rattle among the rocks and leaves. Nope, not once did I ever hear one, but just the thought of the word, makes me think about that!
the toy had a secret inside
but she didn’t try to open it
there didn’t seem a point to this
mortal body
but when we sat on the grass
and tried to talk about our feelings
i couldn’t still my hands
i wanted to pry it apart.
The snake began to rattle as it crawled closer and closer to Kevin’s leg. How did he not hear the sound of the rattle. The snake took it’s time as it slithered closer and closer to the white hairy leg that now lay before him.
Kevin
As a professional dominatrix it’s my job to rattle the clients. You’d think the crop or rope bound tightly or some other manner of restrained humiliation is what hurts the most, the actual physicality of the situation, the interplay of strain as weighted against applied pressures, but it’s the anticipation. How funny it should be words that cut so deeply. They can sear into the mind what a well-timed lash cannot do alone. One client in particular burst into tears after a verbal dressing down of his abilities and psychological fitness. “Why?” asked in a litany of ways can reduce an ego to ash. And who am I to deny moments of surrender, sinner or Saint, I make no distinction between drums and bums, with good timing anything can produce a rhythm, but I also hold no illusions that the tense music I make is really solving anything. It’s the remedy for a symptom not a cure of schisms in the psyche.
Quicksilver
babies. the sounds I heard last night when my 4 year old insisted on sleeping in my room with her favorite snuggly – a stuffed baby with a rattle inside.
Chrysa
the snake rattled his tail, scarying everyone around him. the children know not to touch him for he is dangerous and scary.
Alana Vargues
The babies rattle started to shake and I was so upset. I had just settled her down and she was up again. Whatever was I going to do now. I had tried everything from rocking her to feeding her. I even had changed her. She was just not going to lay down.
Ruth
Rattle of bones
Broken thought
Shadow
Shelters
In blood
BTS
i don’t know what this word means. It sounds ugly. Like rust. And like the filthy animal in the channels. I hope it means something nice anyway.
I hope it does….
ella
At the end of a long day of hiking, Rick and I scrambled up a dusty shortcut over the final hillside. Our heels found purchase in sparse patches of sinewy brush; our hands, too, reached for the gnarly tufts as we inched forward–part-climbing, part-crawling. Just a few more yards until we could stand up and kick the earth out of our boots. But then: Rick’s hand grasping for a hold, an unmistakeable rattle in the thicket, a brief, infinite pause–
Emily
The sound didn’t stop. She looked over her head and tried to follow where it went, but the wall stood between her and the source of the sound. She looked around the library to see if anyone else seemed to hear it. Everyone was absorbed in their computers or their books or their makeout sessions in the stacks.
Okay then.
this rattle rang in my mind, piercing my ears till i fell to the ground.
my knees ached, i laid there waiting for the slithering snake to escape.
stella
i rattled around the house as i did not know how my life was going to turn out the next day. mother was getting sicker and my back, bent and numb, was parching the water that was retained within my bones. the pain was too much and i did not know how it would subside.
devika agarwal
through the tunnels they went
avoiding the trains thundering by,
trying to use the shaking tunnel lights
for timers, for alarms
yelling through the echo shaft:
“now!”
“run!”
“hide!”
dust floated down on their heads
breaths unsteady in the damp darkness
I was afraid of rattlesnakes when I spent some weeks in Texas. I knew that they are very poisonous. Fortunately, I did not get across of such an animal.
Bluered
He pulled the bars with his both hands and shook them hard. The cage rattled, loud an clear, in the empty basement. After trying for sometime, he gave up and looked up. The faint light coming from the cracked ceiling.
nitin
The rattling bones hurt him. He was a man of sixty. But the pain he experienced amounted to an agony that is associated with old sick people. He could feel it, the rattling, and let out an anguished cry. A man sitting near him looked at him and asked, ‘are you all right?’ The man in pain tried to open his mouth, to ask him, to call the doctor, but the words just won’t come out. He felt a blinding pain as his teeth now rattled -loud and clear.
nitin
He rattled her sense of composure. She thought she was so good at keeping herself together, keeping herself in check. But he barged in without stripping off his sneakers, weaseled his way through her defenses into her heart, and she didn’t know what to do.
The soft skin and the bright blue eyes called to her. It was not, in fact, the sound of the annoying rattle, nor the soft cries of the unsure child. No. The call to her was from some deep existence, where she knew that she was needed, beyond the fact that she was wanted. The rattle only focused her attention.
I stayed under the covers and felt my breath rattle my ribs. It was cold out, too cold to get out of bed, and I felt like all of the warmth had been stolen from me in the night by some greedy, nameless phantom. The room was dark, and the sunlight glanced away from the window, leaving the glass frosty from the late winter morning. Yet I couldn’t go back to sleep.
Belinda Roddie
Rattling down the hall, jigging bad memories in my brain, was a sound from a time that I had forgotten, when I was a person I no longer wished to know.
Ann
Chains of Ignorance
Humans are its willing Slaves
One must RATTLE them!
-Haikai-Mann
Haikai-Mann
She held the rattle tightly in her hand and wouldn’t release it. She looked deeply into my eyes as if she wanted to say “Go ahead, mommy, make my day!” I should have known at that point that I had my work cut out for me with my daughter, but I refused to think that a baby was going to get the best of me.
A silver rattle was Ashley’s first from her Grammy. The decision to engrave it and put it away for the future or for her to actually use it was a difficult one. Was silver good for the baby to put in her mouth? As a new mother I had absolutely no idea what I should do. She certainly liked the sound and paid attention as it moved from my hand to my husbands. We were just not sure if it was safe for her to put in her mouth. So we tucked it away in a safe place so we would have time to research the safety of the rattle. Unfortunately she is now 21 and the rattle has still not been found.
Allyson Hart
you came over today just to rattle my cage,
to make me feel like the last time,
like this was the last time,
hope this was the last time.
The sound of extinction impending. It will be soon and it swiftly so the end in a slightly buzzing noise, audible just as it begins. Once the wits become attune to it, game over. The lights went out as though they never came.
It rattled, deep inside me, the breath. I was sure I was dying. My Mom laughed when I told her. It is JUST a cold. I’m sure you’ll be fine. But I wasn’t fine. Were you fine? I felt ceaseless and uncertain and also abruptly ending.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the snake weren’t so fucking loud. Did it have to be a rattle snake? Were they this unsettling on purpose? Clearly that was why the rattles existed. To make the most fucked up creatures on earth even more fucked up and intimidating. Shelby just stared the thing down, fully aware of the fact that snakes could probably hypnotize you and you probably shouldn’t like, look them in the eye or something.
sometimes when I was younger the baby would use his rattle to communicate with me. One shake meant he was hungry. Two and I knew he had to go to the restroom. I guess I always worried when there wasn’t a rattle. I knew something was wrong when I couldn’t hear the marbles or whatever was packed inside it, shaking from a room away. I miss that old thing.
One of my greatest fears about hiking in the Appalachian Mountains was the possibility of hearing a distant rattle among the rocks and leaves. Nope, not once did I ever hear one, but just the thought of the word, makes me think about that!
the toy had a secret inside
but she didn’t try to open it
there didn’t seem a point to this
mortal body
but when we sat on the grass
and tried to talk about our feelings
i couldn’t still my hands
i wanted to pry it apart.
The snake began to rattle as it crawled closer and closer to Kevin’s leg. How did he not hear the sound of the rattle. The snake took it’s time as it slithered closer and closer to the white hairy leg that now lay before him.
As a professional dominatrix it’s my job to rattle the clients. You’d think the crop or rope bound tightly or some other manner of restrained humiliation is what hurts the most, the actual physicality of the situation, the interplay of strain as weighted against applied pressures, but it’s the anticipation. How funny it should be words that cut so deeply. They can sear into the mind what a well-timed lash cannot do alone. One client in particular burst into tears after a verbal dressing down of his abilities and psychological fitness. “Why?” asked in a litany of ways can reduce an ego to ash. And who am I to deny moments of surrender, sinner or Saint, I make no distinction between drums and bums, with good timing anything can produce a rhythm, but I also hold no illusions that the tense music I make is really solving anything. It’s the remedy for a symptom not a cure of schisms in the psyche.
babies. the sounds I heard last night when my 4 year old insisted on sleeping in my room with her favorite snuggly – a stuffed baby with a rattle inside.
the snake rattled his tail, scarying everyone around him. the children know not to touch him for he is dangerous and scary.
The babies rattle started to shake and I was so upset. I had just settled her down and she was up again. Whatever was I going to do now. I had tried everything from rocking her to feeding her. I even had changed her. She was just not going to lay down.
Rattle of bones
Broken thought
Shadow
Shelters
In blood
i don’t know what this word means. It sounds ugly. Like rust. And like the filthy animal in the channels. I hope it means something nice anyway.
I hope it does….
At the end of a long day of hiking, Rick and I scrambled up a dusty shortcut over the final hillside. Our heels found purchase in sparse patches of sinewy brush; our hands, too, reached for the gnarly tufts as we inched forward–part-climbing, part-crawling. Just a few more yards until we could stand up and kick the earth out of our boots. But then: Rick’s hand grasping for a hold, an unmistakeable rattle in the thicket, a brief, infinite pause–
The sound didn’t stop. She looked over her head and tried to follow where it went, but the wall stood between her and the source of the sound. She looked around the library to see if anyone else seemed to hear it. Everyone was absorbed in their computers or their books or their makeout sessions in the stacks.
Okay then.
this rattle rang in my mind, piercing my ears till i fell to the ground.
my knees ached, i laid there waiting for the slithering snake to escape.
i rattled around the house as i did not know how my life was going to turn out the next day. mother was getting sicker and my back, bent and numb, was parching the water that was retained within my bones. the pain was too much and i did not know how it would subside.
through the tunnels they went
avoiding the trains thundering by,
trying to use the shaking tunnel lights
for timers, for alarms
yelling through the echo shaft:
“now!”
“run!”
“hide!”
dust floated down on their heads
breaths unsteady in the damp darkness
I was afraid of rattlesnakes when I spent some weeks in Texas. I knew that they are very poisonous. Fortunately, I did not get across of such an animal.
He pulled the bars with his both hands and shook them hard. The cage rattled, loud an clear, in the empty basement. After trying for sometime, he gave up and looked up. The faint light coming from the cracked ceiling.
The rattling bones hurt him. He was a man of sixty. But the pain he experienced amounted to an agony that is associated with old sick people. He could feel it, the rattling, and let out an anguished cry. A man sitting near him looked at him and asked, ‘are you all right?’ The man in pain tried to open his mouth, to ask him, to call the doctor, but the words just won’t come out. He felt a blinding pain as his teeth now rattled -loud and clear.
He rattled her sense of composure. She thought she was so good at keeping herself together, keeping herself in check. But he barged in without stripping off his sneakers, weaseled his way through her defenses into her heart, and she didn’t know what to do.
The soft skin and the bright blue eyes called to her. It was not, in fact, the sound of the annoying rattle, nor the soft cries of the unsure child. No. The call to her was from some deep existence, where she knew that she was needed, beyond the fact that she was wanted. The rattle only focused her attention.
mr. seratonin man, lend me a gram
I stayed under the covers and felt my breath rattle my ribs. It was cold out, too cold to get out of bed, and I felt like all of the warmth had been stolen from me in the night by some greedy, nameless phantom. The room was dark, and the sunlight glanced away from the window, leaving the glass frosty from the late winter morning. Yet I couldn’t go back to sleep.
Rattling down the hall, jigging bad memories in my brain, was a sound from a time that I had forgotten, when I was a person I no longer wished to know.
Chains of Ignorance
Humans are its willing Slaves
One must RATTLE them!
-Haikai-Mann
She held the rattle tightly in her hand and wouldn’t release it. She looked deeply into my eyes as if she wanted to say “Go ahead, mommy, make my day!” I should have known at that point that I had my work cut out for me with my daughter, but I refused to think that a baby was going to get the best of me.
A silver rattle was Ashley’s first from her Grammy. The decision to engrave it and put it away for the future or for her to actually use it was a difficult one. Was silver good for the baby to put in her mouth? As a new mother I had absolutely no idea what I should do. She certainly liked the sound and paid attention as it moved from my hand to my husbands. We were just not sure if it was safe for her to put in her mouth. So we tucked it away in a safe place so we would have time to research the safety of the rattle. Unfortunately she is now 21 and the rattle has still not been found.
you came over today just to rattle my cage,
to make me feel like the last time,
like this was the last time,
hope this was the last time.
The sound of extinction impending. It will be soon and it swiftly so the end in a slightly buzzing noise, audible just as it begins. Once the wits become attune to it, game over. The lights went out as though they never came.
The engine always rattles. In every car I’ve ever had.
My cars had been used for a decade or more before I owned them, and in one case, it was older than I was.
It rattled, deep inside me, the breath. I was sure I was dying. My Mom laughed when I told her. It is JUST a cold. I’m sure you’ll be fine. But I wasn’t fine. Were you fine? I felt ceaseless and uncertain and also abruptly ending.