
poems by rachel kellum
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Dear Danny,
I forgot I bought him the book
First thing today, Grey texted six photos
of Jack’s “What Can I Say”
A destiny read, he said
Cage’s chance operations
Grey’s fingers on the edge
of morning pages, Amor Fati’s long spine
pried wide, at first I thought
his fingernails were mine
Remember him?
Jack too large for the tiny screen
I grabbed my own worn copy
scanned the contents, page 66, read it
to Dorell steeping coffee in the kitchen
Jack Fest program tucked in
Seven years ago, the night
you met Grey, just 18, at Lithic you said
How are you or something and he said
Tired, life is long and you said
in your slow, crooked-smile drawl
We can only hope and he shrugged
the smallest shrug. Later that night
he hung briefly off his belt from rafters
in Wendy’s garage, pulled up
against gravity
with hard wiry arms. I wondered
why he wore his black hoody up
the next warm day, stacking a precarious cairn
on the edge of Trickster Ridge, a signpost to life:
Go any direction from here
By miracle, Jack still holds Grey’s hand
in Leadville, sits here with me, in me
watching emptiness, like Wallace,
push snow off pinyon branches
What can we say
Because No Poem will be Read at Trump’s Second Inauguration, Here is Mine
Convinced by scientific TikTok evidence, my sons
believe the earth won’t sustain them as old men
Undeterred, one surfs wild rivers and steep snow slopes
Dante’s new Virgil, smiling guide to final earthly joys
The other builds gorgeous archaeologies of sound
ephemeral festival cities for the hopeful, the lost
My daughter fights fires, serves those bent by poverty
pours love into her infant, sparkling boy
My husband builds houses for Buddhist lamas, for peace
for the comfortable rich who cannot sleep
I teach children how to nurture worms, sprouts, compost
make murals for their greenhouse, useful clay cups
Hear this, you broken, misled, profit-blinded, king-minded hoard-men
We will not stop, we will never give up
Your four-year swansong will come to its natural end
I Pull Away from Screens like a Junkie, Reluctantly—
to wash the dog in October
tied to the sunny porch, drying out
barking as I go about filling buckets
to haul ten gallons of water
to five bickering chickens where I see
Brownie’s plucked feathers grew back
to yank blossom-end-rot tomatoes
off dwindling patio plants
before the others go bad too
to notice rusty hummers have moved on
and my troubled neighbor
must be drinking again by the sound of it
and my ear is still an echo chamber
hissing like a seashell I carry everywhere
an improvement over the usual sound
of distant heavy machinery in my head
as if men were shifting gears in me, moving dirt,
tearing up trees, pouring a concrete path through a forest
abandoning failed broken slabs
and bottles of yellow piss
on the shoulder of my wilderness
—the most anti-consumerist, purposeless
I’ve been in months, sitting here, scribbling this
watching the dog grow glossy
Raising Nightshades
All summer, every step into the greenhouse,
she trilled to her tomatoes, Hello, beautiful babies.
Finally, finally, come cooler fall,
shaking her head, she noted they’d been over-watered,
reset the timer to water them less often.
Surveying damage with the shame of a busy mother,
she harvested all the red cracked globes, too embarrassed
to offer the moldered surplus to colleagues.
She threw them out to compost, set to save the rest.
Their radial crusted cracks possible harbors of mold and rot,
she carved their tops like jack-o-lantern lids lifted by the stem.
She blanched, slip-skinned and cored them,
crushed the slick remains, stuffed basil into the boiling pot,
and canned three quarts of spaghetti sauce.
Knowing damn well the alkaloids will make her knees ache,
she vowed to eat her harvest anyway, in salsas too.
She’s sung to these tomatoes grown of saved seed,
and rising stiffly with a groan from a low couch,
she’ll wonder, How could my babies do this to me?
Antidotes for Fear of Losing Him
When I imagine him
hopelessly cold
as I go to spoon him
or gone too many hours
found clutching midnight’s
kettlebell
or the hammer dropped
just out of reach where he fell
or incomprehensibly
slouched beneath
a splattered piñon canopy
beloved calloused finger
stuck in the holy gun
I swallow tears
in my throat like medicine
imagine his ghost
next to me
in the half warm bed
spooning me spooning
the wet-necked shell of him
a nest holding a nest holding a nest
or his broad ghost back
and thick ghost biceps—
a sieve—straining to lift me
off the floor
Death is Taking Care of Us All
The shrunken mouse
in the drive
once looked into Her soft eyes
and huffed.
At Her empty breast,
mosquitos dried up
in August.
Where are their thready bodies?
In the bellies of birds.
My blood too
in the bellies of birds.
Where are their singing bodies?
Busy with their lavish harvest of piñon?
Languishing in 5G dreams?
Either way, my suet brick—untouched
for weeks at 20 degrees.
You Understood
The children’s meeting hall where I teach
is painted pale pink.
A memory of Mr. Croutcher rises
sitting at his desk in a 6th grade classroom
every wall Pepto Bismol pink on his request.
Rumor had it he was gay, hence the pink
since people saw his car at Bobby’s
but this day he told us jails and asylums
are painted pink to calm the patients.
He boomed at me good naturedly
“Rachel, when I say, ‘Speak up,’
who is the subject of the sentence?”
I had a sense, a hunch, but my pink tongue and lips
had no words for it. Pink walls abandoned me.
“You understood!” he shouted, “You understood!”
Once I did, I never forgot.
Walking the Burn…
…my new collection, available from Middle Creek Publishing on March 1, 2025
“If the life lived is the burn, then these poems are paths through this charred landscape that allow us to not only see what is scarred and wounded, but also the astonishing beauty of how things—and people—heal.”
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush, All the Honey and The Unfolding
spontaneous circle
I walked into a spontaneous circle
started by a small girl, arms out, hands reaching
for the hands of unknown adults
heading for their cars
after the local food producers’ shindig
they made room for me, smiling
she spoke quietly, blessed the fire, the wind
the water, the food of this valley
looked at me, said, your turn
Pruning Nasturtiums
It hurts to rip them out
nasturtium vines, sweet blooms
green moons afloat on strings
smothering young lettuce
with shade, perfume
Hacked to the stem, I wait
They will come again, unspool
I will notice when
they are just right