A guitar watches a blue boy
play video games all day.
Its blind eye does not blink.
He cannot think of school.
Strings vibrate when he
laughs in vanished victory,
groans in bloodless defeat.
Xs shine in his eyes, ask
Why do anything?
The guitar has no reply.
2018
You Tom Buchanans
You Ayn Rands
You million- billionaires
Who hold out soft hands
You forgetful heirs
Who suck
On birth-earned generations
Of well-invested
Family-sponsored welfare:
Spare us—
The teaching poor
The working class
Paying off
Our bloated master’s
Who never wake
From nightmares
Of looming financial
Or bodily disaster—
Your judgment
For begging more pay
Or worse, to suck
Your hoarded
Christian taxes
While we pinch
Days and months
To fund your profits
Your endless battles
Where you send kids
Who trade bodies
We made them
For the promise
Of health care, travel
And education
To die protecting
Your subsidized
Hand me down
Speculation.
2018
Put off cooking. Pour Horizon low fat eggnog into Solar Roast coffee. Sit on the couch where you slept last night with two dogs. Leo yours, Lucy a travelling friend’s rescued rez dog known for fearing men.
Her barking calls you out of sleep. Dimly take it in: your lover rising in warm bare skin, silhouette calling out the door, down the hall, voice high and kind, unlike the one he gives your cat: “Lucy, Lucy, shhhh….” She does not stop. Thirty-two toenails tap the bamboo floor, pace in a state of high alert.
At first, you are proud of Leo’s vocal restraint, then concerned. Not much of a protector, his specialty is fending off grazing deer. Touched by your man’s tenderness toward the animal wrecking his sleep and feeling responsible for taking on dog-sitting without his consent, when Lucy starts her ruckus yet again at ten till one to warn you of your son’s peanut butter and jelly driven post-party intrusion, you rise, slip into a t-shirt, backwards, inside out, lie down on the second-hand sectional couch, call the dogs to join you. The fire he made still ablaze, without a blanket, you doze in its orange window, dogs quiet now, and dream.
You wander a land of Mormons, testing sanitized realms, re-reading pre-internet tracts, artfully dodging earnest, clean-cut men and skirted wives. Certain you could never return, you wake relieved and fall asleep again. Twice you dream of going back to bed, to him, only to wake in two separate dreams of Lucy’s barking, after which you really wake, drooling on the couch in moonlight, fire licking lowly, dogs snoring or nervously skittering. You let them out to pee. Lucy barks at night in general, laughing coyotes north of here, cousins of her friends at home a mile uphill. Leo smiles at her audacity. They settle in a final time. You leave the couch, return to bed’s oblivion. It might be half past three.
Kitchen sounds pull you partly out of sleep, imagining your love making cinnamon rolls, the KitchenAid churning, flour sifting snow on countertops while coffee drips its promises. You think this life is good, arise, vaguely plan to write, even though, entering the kitchen, you see he is only doing dishes, tall in thick cotton navy robe, the king of morning. You bury your face between shoulder blades, steam pressing against your clasped hands. He thaws.
Then begins the gathering of packages and cans of your mother’s Thanksgivings: King’s Hawaiian Sweet Rolls, Great Value French-fried onions, French-sliced green beans, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, Pepperidge Farm stuffing, Full Circle boxed chicken broth. The month’s belt too tight for most organics, you shake it off, decide there is no hurry, abandon cans for the couch and coffee and him, where this poem begins.
When his little girl wakes, she goes for the iPad first thing, begins her Roblox binge. Soon, you coax her from the screen, together start the pies with Libby’s can of pumpkin, three fist-sized Granny Smith’s. Rolling your actual granny’s butter-flavored Crisco-burdened piecrust, you feel blissfully, not quite ignorantly, thankful, take your place in American history, happy despite your interrupted middle class night and economic iniquities, pray the destitute in Crestone’s nearby mountain caves can forgive you the way you forgave the rich for selling you this day, minus love and cold potatoes you dug up yourself: purple and golden knots of hard hope you found beneath the freeze.
2018
They feed me like a queen.
Ahk! I’m too fat to stand on my own feet!
Please give me more of that fancy seed.
Why does this red water make me feel so serene?
2018
I wrote this riddle poem as an example for my middle school students who are learning how to liven up their writing by using all four sentence types: declarative, exclamatory, imperative, and interrogative. Their riddles were sometimes hilarious, sometimes cryptic, and they learned something about the power of sentence variety to boot! Woo hoo! Who knew I’d love teaching middle schoolers this much?
Brown curls fade like meteors
Across an inner sky.
My head, a solid thought of starlings,
Parts and spreads.
Fingers fizzle out like sparklers in July.
Arms swirl like sand bars
Stolen by midnight prairie flood.
There goes my heart, a shattered
Glass in slow motion rainbow.
Blood, what becomes of blood? Mist?
Lungs disperse like a careless cough.
My lunch is carried off in my guts
By invisible vultures.
Hips loosen their grip on motherhood’s
Lingering ache and break into light.
My legs explode and lift
Like two burst pillows in a gust of wind.
These feet go walking as dust into dust
In a million glinting rays.
My stories move and move through
Edgeless space like radio waves
Transmitting all the tongues and songs
And breaking news and silly sitcoms
Of humankind. I laugh a laughless
Laugh track, completely uncanned.
2018
Small town Illinois girl, once London-lost,
now Colorado-, I feed chickens
plastic-packaged crumble. Crumbled what?
It’s non-organic. Half the cost.
It worries me “I can’t afford to do the right thing.”[1]
It’s winter. Foraging is over. Grasshoppers live
in my omelet even when I forget “every bone
and bird and worm has spirit in it.”[2]
What spirit lives in crumble?
Other times, “excruciatingly alive,”[3] I flinch.
Once, a local rancher/landlord told my man
(must you know he’s black?)
The previous tenant—white trash—
nigger-rigged the bathroom plumbing.
We didn’t say a thing, just blinked.
Later, chewing chicken fajitas, he laughed,
Maybe I’ll just Digger-rig* it. He didn’t say,
“Cast down your bucket where you are,”[4]
though this is what he has to do. Unruffled,
Nebraska born, he perfectly plumbed
that bathroom. He didn’t say, “We wear the mask.”[5]
Unemployed, last night he dreamed his legs
were white like mine when he removed his pants
to give them to the homeless San Francisco man.
What does his skin have to do
with mine? Middle aged, I have cried
that we will bear no “blackish child”[6]
nor have to hide my father’s
cherished 19th century will
in which a slave was passed down to a son.
I won’t forget my father’s gleeful, childhood
march to Beethoven. Kill the Jews! Kill!
he dreamed they must have sung.
Or ever hear him say,
“Let those I love try to forgive
What I have made.”[7]
Instead of “eat[ing him] like air,”[8]
“I [ache] as if he were already gone.”[9]
Unlike my solid daughter, I crumble,
feed myself to flightless chickens
I’ve never had to steal
nor slaughter.
April 2014
_______________________________
*A local high school football team is called the Beetdiggers. Fans refer to themselves as “Diggers.”
All excerpts are from The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Concise, 1st Edition, edited by Paul Lauter:
[1] Sherman Alexie, “What you Pawn I Will Redeem,” p. 1603
[2] Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera, p. 1457
[3] Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera, p. 1458
[4] Booker T. Washington, “Up from Slavery,” p. 517
[5] Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,” p. 465
[6] Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi,” p. 1052
[7] Ezra Pound, “CXX,” p. 637.
[8] Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus,” p. 1175
[9] Alison Bechdel, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” p. 1637
Hiking trails of the greenbelt between Crestone and the Baca for almost a year now, I can’t help but notice the random piles of old junk left by squatters and wanderers of bygone eras—hippies, or even further back, miners—under the pinion pines. Stripped trucks, ancient refrigerators, gorgeous mounds of rusty old tin cans whose lids still hang on by a thread decades after feeding someone who didn’t mind cold beans.
Last night one smallish can caught my eye so I picked it up, thinking I might draw it. The inside was full of dirt, powdered rust and bleached grasses caught in abandoned spider webs. When I shook the dark red powder out, the can coughed and spoke in a voice old and gruff, like a slurring drunk bachelor with chew in his mouth.
“Whaddaya want?” the old can said. “I can give it’ya.”
“I want this,” I said, surprised at my spontaneous conviction, and even more startled by my lack of embarrassment or personal concern to be talking to an ancient can.
“This?” the can hissed. “You want this?”
“Yes, this. This sandy, cactus straddled trail. This dog smiling, tongue flopping, as he zigzags back and forth, peeing on every rabbit brush he passes. My house with dishes crusted with Cream of Wheat in the sink. My husband piling wood. My job corralling restless kids into words and paint. My loving, befuddled, Fortnite-comforted sons struggling to become men in the outrage of Trump. My aging face. My ratty hair threaded with wiry white. All this.”
“Your wish is granted,” he said with a force that spit out a piece of grass that picked up a small draft and floated away.
I studied his fragile edges as dusk fell. I placed him on a shelf. He hasn’t spoken since.
We’re all here, and we’re watching a concert
that will never be replicated exactly the same.
Ólafur Arnalds
A soft voiced man from Iceland
samples mute pianos, feeds the songs
to lovely code that sends the notes
again to ivory. Euclidean algorithm,
the disembodied spirit plays the keys.
Did he say code arranges songs
more human than hands can fashion?
Unimagined tinkling patterns grow,
play one time and ever gone. Inimitable.
Choked, we scroll. We scroll. Commenters
weep without knowing why, string together,
post, well-timed slide shows of nature photos
matched with Arnalds’ almost-sorrow sounds.
Marry wood and spring machines to new
machines to snow, to ice to ears to hearts,
to eyes fixed on handheld windows. Kitchens,
beds, desks and couches glow with solitude.
Outside, choirs of crickets mix the stars.
2018
White fuzz on the potted rosemary might kill it
if I don’t do something. Lazy or too busy.
I don’t make the nontoxic spray.
I place the pot in the rain, hope its spores
don’t drift to other plants. Accept its days
are limited. Late summer. Three volunteer
larkspur in fake terracotta, ferny mysteries
that came with the house, are dead, the basil dwarfed,
petunias barely blooming one per scanty stalk.
High altitude abundance pulls back into a paler self.
I rip open papery tripartite pods, cast black seeds
like pepper over the deck. Don’t hope.
Just weeks ago larkspur were cornflower blue,
my childhood’s favorite waxen color.
But I am writing to forget the smell of crayons.
I am writing because my words are scabs
doing work on the cheap while Poetry shouts
and jabs its signs at air, wanting something
more than tired father woe. The scabs
have nothing else to say but this: My dad is dead,
my dad is dead, and I don’t dream or even sense him
in his favorite songs. I can’t project my grief
to make him seem alive in Jacob’s ladders.
What did I expect? I dropped his church
in a canyon south of Lehi. Red rock. So what
if I fed him ice cream in a busy parking lot, drove him
restless up to witness Mount Timpanogos
one more time while listening to LDS radio broadcast
hushed tones of patriarchs and tender wives
in interview selling the dream
of eternal benevolent fathers. It almost felt true.
I’ve no pendant of his thumbprint on my throat.
I only have his hands. And feet. Huge chin. Square cheeks.
I passed them on to children, as will they. Eternally.
It doesn’t matter. Everything you have,
he proudly told me once, you’ve done on your own.
Or something like that. A backwards compliment.
Another way to leave me nothing but myself.
Another way to slap the back of his own painful honesty,
polish this facet of his charming self-lashing:
how great I turned out without him. His absence:
the great hand that rolled, coiled, fired and filled me.
This cracked pot can’t hold him anymore.
2018
For Mad Max
Reading Selene’s essay when my father died
a self-confessed father-loather, father-broken,
I didn’t feel him pass. No whispers, chills or visions.
Her words carried no parting words from him
except perhaps, in a story she told
on the first day of class with no hint of known patricide:
I was named for the goddess of the moon.
Selene, daughter of Hyperion, the High One.
Often, a girl’s significance, outer & inner, is born
of her father’s mess. Hyperion—son of Gaia & Ouranos
(Earth & Sky)—one of twelve Titan children
who, encouraged by Earth’s child-loyal vengeance
and led by Cronus (Time), overthrew their father.
Only Oceanus cried as Time castrated Sky, tossed
his genitals into the sea. From their foam sprang Love
& other things. Aphrodite rising on a half shell.
The over-throwers were, of course, later overthrown
by their own brood. Let it be a lesson unto you who kill
your fathers with this belief: others’ truths of him are lies.
Bury him whole. Name his fathers. Your sons, daughters,
too, one day may spring from a sea of your half-told life.
Perhaps half-grown their love of you will wax & wane
like sideline Selene who soon lost her name, a moon
of memory swelling and undressing tides of grief.
2018
“…on blood antenna / and dust radio”
~Chris Whitley
for D.D.
On those days
static leans hard
on either side of me,
I’m a song
I no longer hear.
You hold me
in the kitchen,
a dial tuning in
to a sliver. Listen,
this is a faint station.
Never out of range,
you always find it.
2018
With thanks to William Stafford, Chris Whitley, and Pete Anderson for the writing exercise.
ABOUT RACHEL KELLUM — Poet, artist and teacher Rachel Kellum lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Her passion is to help people of all ages live artfully and mindfully. Rachel has taught English, literature, and the humanities at Morgan Community College, where she also directed the Gallery of Fine Arts.
ABOUT PETE ANDERSON — In his books and in his life, poet, editor, teacher, and adventurer, Pete Anderson explores the ecology of story, spirit, landscape, parenting, and the cultural eccentricities of the American West. He teaches at Adams State College in Alamosa. Writing, he says, is about making a home: in the high desert, in the world of ideas, and in the great mystery of it all.
ABOUT LAURIE JAMES — Laurie James lives on a hill of sand with a pocket gopher, eighteen salamanders, and herds of well-fed birds. She can be found in Salida, picking up twigs on the edge of eternity. She’s performed with The River City Nomads for many years, and co-founded Sparrows, the Salida Poetry Festival.
ABOUT WENDY VIDELOCK — Wendy Videlock’s poems have appeared several times in Poetry Magazine, Best American Poetry, Hopkins Review, The New York Times, The New Criterion, Quadrant, The Dark Horse, Rattle, and other literary journals. Her books are available from Able Muse Press and other book outlets. Wendy is also a visual artist, and her paintings are featured in several Colorado art galleries, among them:The Blue Pig Gallery, Working Artists Gallery, and Willow Creek.
Man Ray, Yves Tanguy,
Joan Miró, Max Morise,
you architects
of exquisite corpse,
bring a woman in,
dream the Siamese kiss.
You four men cannot
deny the yin of orifice,
the phallic sticks
of dynamite, pistols spraying.
Mark it, baby! Come and piss!
State of the art!
Only Miró dropped
the obvious violence—
beneath the body of sex
and death he gave us dust,
creature, appendage,
a lit match, the vague line.
The monster sits
on the back of a man,
dead or simply
fallen with the weight
of his side
of the binary.
Blind to design, men love
to pass sketched paper
hand to hand,
pass land and women
like pieces of folded power.
A game! Art of the state!
Layer by layer they build
upon fragments
of other men’s clues, desire
daring us: unfold this mess,
marvel at our artifice,
our clever disaster.
2017/2018
Today, by noon, your boys
so far have forgotten Father’s Day.
Divorced ten years, their dad
doesn’t want you to remind them.
Backspace the text you started
each carefully chosen word at a time.
In the most despicable way,
you feel better about the year
they forgot Mother’s Day
and he didn’t remind them.
Admit it. You cried. You were glad
they felt badly when they realized
their mistake. But why care?
It’s a stupid Hallmark holiday.
Still, forgetting is pudding proof
they don’t have a clue how hard
being a parent is— infant fevers,
public displays of tangled toddler hair,
dripping snot, the sibling punch,
the teacher’s heartless taunt,
the constant sense of impending… what?
(don’t say or even think it)
with every unexcused absence,
below-average English grade,
the social judgment for every ripped knee
or t-shirt stain, the gnawing guilt
of making time or love or a life
for yourself outside of what’s for dinner,
the fear that any self care you steal
is directly related to why
your child will need therapy
in a decade or two or five,
when they decide to divorce
a wife too little or too like you.
What will they write or say someday,
these children who forget you,
remember your crimes before the good.
With sheepish shame, you look forward
to the stupid holiday, the stupid card
(hopefully homemade with a cut-out heart,
no matter their age), the one day and way
you know they have at least been taught
to enact the performance of gratitude
for you, for their existence and the chance
to grapple with the art of living
on a boat floating on the sea of death.
They and the day are still young.
You are not. Their father waits.
Neither of you hold your breath.
2018
For Rosemerry
Appropriately shaped and named,
staked irrigation wands
shower parasols of homemade rain
over gnarled, crisp leaves of tiger lilies,
magically resurrecting green blades
I had counted as lost
for having begun watering so late.
Brown needles, the carpet of piñon trees,
sprout stalks of green mystery, like fate.
Everything that needs water,
my darling, patiently waits.
2018
