Rattle and Rattle

Okay, it's official. Journals are ruining my life. I'm sitting in the Kimmel Center, listening to Simon Rattle conduct a performance of Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri and all I can think about is journal submissions. Because cut out the overblown romanticism and the 'mystical East' trappings, and that's basically what's happening. You want to get into Paradise (a journal). You offer them the blood of a slain hero. They send back a polite note thanking your for your submission but regretting that it doesn't meet their current needs. You offer them the sighs of true love. Still they reject you. Finally, in despair, you offer them the tears of the true penitent and they relent. You're in! Hurrah! Break out the trumpets, bring on the choir!

And speaking of journals, the new issue of Rattle arrived today, including, among others, this delightful little sonnet by Joseph Bathanti:

Jesus Meets the Women

They bump into Him shopping in Bloomfield.
It's how many years? He's skin and bone.
The hair. The beard. Some kind of radical.
But still He shows respect, kisses each one,
inquires about their health, tells them to pray,
ask anything in His name and it's theirs.
They laugh. He's probably on drugs, they say.
His poor widowed mother. Thirty-three years
old, a grown man, and still can't settle down.
The little bit He makes He gives away,
while poor Mary sits in one room downtown,
practically on welfare, day after day.
They don't mention the thorns or bloody cross.
He's not a bad kid, just a little lost.

- Joseph Bathanti