Rattle Magazine: The Neil Postman Award for Metaphor
Rolling Deadline
Rattle is proud to announce Craig van Rooyen's "Siege Machinery", which appeared in issue #64, as the winner of the 2020 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor.
We established the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor in honor and remembrance of Neil Postman, who died on October 5, 2003. The intention of the award is simple and two-fold: to reward a given writer for their use of metaphor, and to celebrate (and, hopefully, propagate) Postman's work and the typographical mind. Each year, the editors choose one poem that was published from regular submissions to Rattle during the previous year. There are no entry fees or submission guidelines involved. The author of the chosen poem receives $2,000.
For more information and to read all fourteen previous winners, please visit the award's webpage. To submit your own poems, choose any free submission option on our Submittable page.
SIEGE MACHINERY
by Craig van RooyenDusk slides beneath her dress,
creeps across her thighs, slipsover the rise of her belly.
Night gathers in the hollowat the base of her throat.
I know she hears knives sharpeningwhen I unzip her,
the dress down-fountainingover her bare feet. I can vanish
into the dark small of her back,my bristled chin plowing
down its single row.But there are places I dare not touch.
The timpani behind a knee,the bowstring throat, a taut
and fluted ankle:each an old crime scene
still taped off.Yet, she has learned to open,
guiding the hot bladesof my hands into untouched places
that burn with their own furnaces.I don't pretend to be a healer,
bring only my glinting hook of needto petal open her ribs, crack through
the gristle of her assembled face.She is a horse, gravid
with the bodies of old lovers.With them, I move inside her
waiting to set the city on fire.
—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019
