poems by rachel kellum
to comment ✒️ click on a title
Meditation on Birthdays
Split into a multiplying
whole.
Split once more.
Exit a body.
Guttural commemoration.
The parting
of flesh from flesh.
Complete dependence on earth’s
insistent urge:
grow, assist the growing
by splitting time,
splitting food, splitting the mind
into two bodies.
Call that mother. Rare father. God.
Forget their births like air.
Call that
your final lover
gentle scout of the coming year
oracle of aches
celebrator of flyaway greys
who remembers
the miracle of your life
before you, slow to wake, do,
whispers
Happy birthday, Love.
2019
Mosquito Yoga
Challenger Peak blinding white is dreaming
of mosquitos famous black swarms
chasing me whining down dirt streets
slapping air the local yogi once said offer
your body to their stings nude willingly
let them feed they will agree
to leave you alone all summer I have no
faith in blood suckers’ good nature
forgive me last year our first here
no snow no mosquitos just smoke
I won’t lie I was glad to garden mosquito
free no silent back of the knee stings
or tiny needle songs I was glad but now
the snow more snow People can’t last
outside even for minutes! What the hell
is going on with Global Warming? an idiot
tweets Please come back fast, we need you!
as though warm earth only means
heat Challenger named for that famous
wreck lost teacher brilliant frost in my living
room window storm after storm
will begin the slow trickle Crestone creeks
will weave into mosquito songs build
mosquito condos I will stay indoors
or slather scented oils desperate poisons
on my skin to weed my garden
grateful the valley woke up from my
selfish mosquitoless dream and
towhees will drink drink drink their tea
2019
Half Sister
her job
is witness
let them
have their
roughly happy
tales of
a father
despite her
sad ones
they think
her life
is full
of lies
their stories
allow them
to feel
right righteous
for hiding
his will
(keep it)
confirm he
nor they
ever cared
enough about
his first
forever family
to provide
for their
well- being
both sets
of stories
lie some-
where in
be- tween
are always
have always
been true
all all
loved and
feared no
heard and
learned him
how to
live split
to forgive
2019
Advice for Mothers in One and a Third Haiku
After you’ve watched films
recommended by your son,
don’t talk about them.
You’ll likely be wrong.
2019
Advice in Increments of 17 Syllables
Mothers: don’t make light
of your earnest son’s mistake.
Better to be stone.
Impenetrable.
If you don’t talk about it,
it never happened.
Perhaps silence heals.
It can. Buried deep, alive,
pain speaks other ways.
2019
Curried
The night I made a perfect homemade chicken curry,
it wore the house around its pungent, yellow air.
I opened windows and doors to save my carpets
and clothes from lingering odor, knowing my hair
would not shed the heavy scent in morning’s washing.
Though students twitch their noses when I share
some whisper of advice about their drawings, I am in love
and loved by the one for whom I cook, and we don’t care
if, at 48, our pores, our breath, our kisses reek of curry.
2019
Should Have Gone Before Cooking Curry
Rain’s first storm murmurs.
I put off walking the dog.
He paces, hopeful.
2019
Hotsprings Jesus
Everyone is talking
at the hot springs on Easter.
They are talking about their lives.
No one is talking about Easter.
No, nothing about Jesus at all.
Oh look! Your toenail polish came off!
We’ll repaint them while you sleep.
I’m a light sleeper, he said.
You’re just saying that to deter us.
Her work in interior design.
Feng Shui?
Yes, a little of that. More intuitive.
Her husband drops her son
off at school, not her, no way.
He drives against the grain, wrong lane,
unable to merge into Baseline traffic.
May my son live.
We call them the L towns.
Longmont. Lafayette. Loveland.
Someday they’ll merge into one.
No, the locals are fighting that.
Her husband’s skillful hands.
I design. He builds.
I call him Magic Man.
I work three jobs in Durango,
serve ginger carrot soup to the rich,
live in a trailer.
Grizzly bears in binoculars
charging grandchildren.
Run! he yelled at her. Run!
Run? You should become a stone!
The silence holding the mountains.
Pietà. We hear it.
The water is hot.
We lift ourselves in and out of it.
In and out of it.
We don’t want to listen.
We rise out of the voices.
This is not a baptism.
2019