Rattle #93, Fall 2026: Tribute to the Future

Tribute to the Future
Still Life with
Jane Hirshfield
The Fall 2026 issue of Rattle looks ahead with a Tribute to the Future. Fourteen poets imagine AI voices that are almost friends, climate anxiety at cocktail parties, love affairs with chatbots and plastic dolls, Mars colonies, fallout shelters, and the cheerful robot maids we were once promised. The future never seems to arrive in quite the shape we expect, and these poems explore what we fear, what we hope for, and what we refuse to give up.

Elsewhere, the open section is just as unpredictable. A woman finds a man who loves exactly the smells she was taught to hide. A hardened biker offers his seat at the bar. A job applicant forgets his own name mid-interview. There are poems about grief and parents, dogs and cancer treatments, childhood houses and the mathematics of memory—all of it a reminder that reality is stranger than anything we might have planned.

And in Still Life, Katie Dozier visits Jane Hirshfield at her home near San Francisco Bay, among lemons, figs, plums, weeds, and freshly baked sourdough. Alongside Dozier’s photo essay, Hirshfield’s “An Apricot with Hikmet” and “Towel” bring an issue preoccupied with tomorrow back to the difficult, beautiful work of being here now.

Contents
Editor’s Note
Timothy Green Editor’s Note
Poetry
Adrienne Christian Praise Song for the Man Who Smells
George David Clark Psalm 131
James Crews In the Good Light
Billie Dee Gila Bend
Michael Diebert Lateral Move
Lynne Knight This House, That House
Sean Lyons Math
Peter Nathaniel Malae Snake River
J. Alan Nelson Kim Kardashian Bares So Much Side Boob …
Alan Shapiro October 1962
Susan Delaney Spear My Choice
Natalie Taylor Getting the Hands Right
Nadja Tiktinsky A Brain and a Body
Steven H. Turrill Big Bear
Mark Yakich Cancer Treatments
Still Life
Katie Dozier The Baker
Jane Hirshfield An Apricot with Hikmet
Towel
Tribute to the Future
Esat Alpay Almost a Friend
Susan Browne The Future, A Cocktail Party Conversation
Maryann Corbett On Rereading Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus …
Mary Fontana El Paso East
Luisa Muradyan Man Who Dates Plastic Doll Responds to Neighbor …
Ella Peavler American Myth
J.B. Penname Stellar Survey
Seth Peterson In the Words of Future Historians
Phill Provance Meanwhile, Somewhere in Germany …
Vaishnavi Pusapati After the Mundane
Michele Rosario EVE’s Garden
Michael Stalcup iWonder
John Wojtowicz Stargazer’s Half-Dozen
Fred Zirm An Elegy for the Future
Cover Art
Richard Wagner, Jr. Swallows Cave (2020)