poems by rachel kellum
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For Chopin’s Women
When you can’t listen to any more
love songs and the ones in your head
have begun to fade, and your lover has stopped
singing about you, and reticent letters have come
to an end, and your children are seldom
adorable, and your husband only
a friend, disappointment gently gives
way to weightless, faceless grace.
There is nothing to be unmade. Nothing
about which to be jaded. Nothing
from which to run. Nothing
for which to wait. Unsolved,
you just stay. Watch
the day. Play at words.
Maybe pray to recall
how to love in this strange
place, or at the edge
of your mind, swim away.
2007/2011
My child teaches the wisdom of no escape
In the bath tub he makes magic
potion with shaving cream.
“It can turn people into bears
and fish and fleas,” he says.
“May I have some?” I ask.
And add, “I want to be a bird.”
He pulls the frothy bottle close
to his chest, hand over its lip,
grins, “No…you’d never be
our mom… ever again.”
And I am pegged. Does he know
I want to fly away? Not forever.
Just today. And maybe tomorrow.
Or a week. No, a year. West of here.
“Can you make a potion that wears
away so I can turn back into me?”
He shakes his head no. I smile and leave
him singing of bees. I think, he is right,
there is no getting away from me.
2007
with thanks to Samuel Rune
three degrees below freezing: if there is light enough to see
It is cold. People are careful,
wear more clothes than are comfortable.
We wrap arms around ourselves
and lean into the warmest places
we find, and in these places
still find cold around edges,
seeping through seams,
or deep in the core of things
we thought would always burn.
We lean for a long time and wait
for heat to build on heat.
It usually does.
We want to think we are earths
crusted around molten cores
of roiling light. But that light is dark
inside. And though we say it is, it isn’t light,
it’s heat we seek in times like these.
We trust the deep fire of the body,
of each others’ bodies, to deliver, and
hope the heat is light. In heat lives the body,
in the body: light the eye can’t see
until we break open and what’s inside seeps
slow amber glowing. Here, I have broken,
come warm your hands, read by me.
2007
The faith of hounds
Church bells ring at 9 o’clock
People called to pews
From aerial view,
crawling ants
disappear into squares
Old hound howls out
low-oh-only
low-oh-only
low-oh-only me
and stops when the bells do
a prayer in her tail
2007
with thanks to E.B.
of breasts and mushrooms
A loose jowled, broad shouldered woman in black
wanders our camp with large handled basket and
pendulous breasts swinging freely beneath peasant blouse
above thin legs. She asks in lilting accent, perhaps French,
“May I have your mushrooms?” as though they were ours
only for camping for a price on a mountain where air hums
with RV generator songs. Admiring her trespass of parceled
campground boundaries, her astute respect for American
habits of possession in a quest for fungal delicacies,
and having enough delighted in their frumpy company peeking
at my pointing children from tiny mosses and pine duff, I say,
“Yes, of course,” and notice her basket nearly full, soil clinging
to creamy sponge roots below dozens of burnt red waxen caps,
echoing her own robust form. She squats and pulls. Wanders.
Squats and pulls some more, looks up at me, around me,
as I write. I want to walk with her, watch her cook these mysteries
over fire, taste her Rocky Mountain dreams of French cuisine.
I imagine, instead, her crossing into other camps, ambassador, visiting
my rough brothers-in-law, their blonde wives, leaning against red
trucks and silver mini vans, not far from here, through lodge pole pines,
her gentle request, their eyes upon her passing swaying breasts,
crude comments chuckled beneath beer breath,
relieved their own wives’ tits are tucked away,
firmly compressed, hiding their age, padded and wired
from wandering eyes, mushrooms unable to rise,
no nipples greeting the duff of day.
featured in Four Corners Free Press, September 2011
A Dear Jane to the Colorado Mountains
You are the bait.
Everyone loves you.
Everyone stares
at your breasts
when they speak. You
don’t blush or say
“I’m up here,” pointing
at your eyes. Instead,
as soon as we’re in sight,
you take hold of bellies,
pull the thread and yank!
We lose our breath,
wanting only you.
Demanding, insatiable,
expensive lover…
Jealous, I’ve loved you blue.
But your plain, flat-
chested sister is a tender
lover too. Not easy, granted.
Not you. People look
right past her
even at her best
but her heart of corn is true.
Her needs are simple:
Just stay. I do.
She sends me owls, asking,
Who are you, who, who?
And I am shocked,
Someone new.
She has fallen out of love
When he felt the cloud kiss his cheek
that morning at the pond, and the boys
wouldn’t hush, and it didn’t matter
as he cast and cast around his fly,
flying mobius band of glinting light,
he didn’t know his wife would cry
in bed that night: she feels caught.
He would carefully listen
and carefully respond
as eleven years have taught.
She would hold her forehead
with her palm in the dark.
She would tell him all the muddy
catfish snags of her love,
all but the one that would snap
the line, rip the hook from her heart.
Weeping Fig
Spiraled
Ficus Benjamina,
I imagine your roots
A fisted knot, pushing
Against walls of ornate
Pot, unable to outgrow it, unable
To live outdoors. Still, you push
Out leaves on dying twigs,
Drop them, crispened
Handkerchiefs.
Carry me at your hip
A long strapped
Soft leather purse,
Or Guatemalan fabric bag.
Whatever you prefer.
I’d even be blood red
Polyvinyl Beijo* for you.
Reach into me
For keys.
This one opens
Your backdoor eyes.
This one
Your front door smile
This one
Your Cadillac heart.
Maybe pink. Guzzler
Of liquid word dreams.
Lay me down
In the passenger’s seat.
Drive slow,
All around
the town of Fort Metaphor
and Outer Suburban Simile.
You, the mayor
Of polysyllabic mystery
Inspiring your holy citizenry.
There’s a mirror in me.
Here, study
Your pores.
Shake the cold
From your hair.
Glide this shine
On your lips
And speak.
*Bay-ZHOO: 1. A kiss 2. a lawful kiss, never worth as much as a stolen one 3. handbags designed by one mother for other mothers, many with a singular pearlescent finish.