poems by rachel kellum
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Though he has a replacement
He is still playing the guitar.
The thinnest string broke
Two days ago. Low tunes
Thread slow through
My hands forgetting
Words, and silence
Sings the sixth
String in me.
2008/2011
This body is not ALL THAT, though
It houses all it tends to think
I am. Hungry belly, heavy lids,
Tired breasts, a behind
That could be bigger but isn’t,
Comfortably forty. Forty years!
This body’s four decades of
Little deaths, this body a blue-
Print for cells who very kindly
Continue to replicate to replace
What is lost as I die every day,
Though today have forgotten
To fill a few finer lines. It’s ok.
They don’t ask for reward
Or accolades. They just live
For me, give me a chance
To think about the texture
Of wood, the sound of my son
Breathing. When the day comes
My cells stop thinking, they
Won’t be making meaning
Anymore, they won’t mean
Anything when I walk out.
They won’t even be a door.
Truth is, I am the door.
My body just happened
To pass through.
29 April 2011
choosing hazelnut creamer 14 years later and suddenly
hazelnut coffee
thin windowed basement in you
whispering thick loss
for a
tweeze
I bring travel tweezers downstairs from his bathroom to return
to my wallet’s zippered coin purse for emergency rear view mirror
tweezing. I never know when my eyebrows will sprout black secrets.
I stop to check my email first, read an inbox poem about white horizons,
follow a link through Roethke on cliches, to one about a mother who can’t stay,
or even say, enough already, quiet please, I’ve nothing to do with nonsense poetry.
I notice my left hand, silver tweezers still half pinched, poised to pluck.
becoming colorado plainsong
I never meant to stay so long, friends,
but while I’m here
I’ll let this sky
carve of me
a wide
bowl
holding nothing
with room enough
for every little thing.
It is possible my children will burn
It is possible my children will burn
my journals, my life’s mess, full
as they are of horrible confessions
and scratched out words. Perhaps
this is best, that they have their own
ideas of me, rather than my ideas
of myself. Both are just as dim
and broken, iridescent and flash.
Memories, propped up things
in dusty light and fingerless black.
death dream, a token
I was chewing a handful of almonds
when they told me you were dead, love.
My sob forced the solid lump of crumbs
into my hand. I began the slow walk
into your kitchen, the slow collapse.
Knees, belly, face, hands outstretched
to the last place I saw you stand,
left palm touching what had touched
your feet, right hand offering almonds
to the air that once held you, eating.
into back forward and out
your flesh
and clear
water eyes
over me
praying
your body
pouring
soft angles
into mine
flashing
love into
shine
key to the kingdom
My students are taught
not
to write passively, in passive voice.
Never
invert the hierarchy. (The subject: You
understood.) I
am told to say objects should not come
before subjects.
In other words, it is best not
to remind
your reader of objects first,
of the dog
run over by the dented car,
or the man
ignored by his wife, smoking
a Camel.
For example, a good academic
would
never say, The forests were stripped,
before the men,
smelling of gas, realized their mistake.
Instead,
we should say, The men, smelling of gas,
realized
their mistake after stripping the forest,
or
The men stripped the forest, and
smelling
of gas, finally realized their mistake.
It is all
about the subject and what he chooses.
Objects
wait at the end. Those who are done unto
do not
take the rightful place of those who do.
Don’t forget this,
children; it’s an important English rule
(though,
true, one often broken by poets).