poems by rachel kellum
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Stray
Hank didn’t mean to nip my wrist
but he did
straining against my hand in his collar
wrenching
him back with all my weight
his burning leash
zipping through my palms
as he lurched
snarl-barking, vicious with self-defense
as the collarless
muscled neighbor dog rushed beneath
its own fence
the one Hank has puckishly pissed against
for years on daily walks
both dogs hoping it would come to this
wistfully reliving
their days in the streets as wary, wiry strays
starved sovereigns
guarding trash and shifting margins
before the rescue,
the softening, the new name morphing
daily into
a litany of canine emasculation:
Hankster, Bubby
Hanky Poo, Boo Boo, My Little Fuzzyman.
Rilke says now it is time that gods came walking out of lived-in Things
like this book, the one who takes these words
into its skin—sloppy tattoos, and all the books
upon my shelf, a dusty thousand toothed grin
like the bed who holds us, my lover and me
in its palm, and the softest offering of birds
a heavy down upon us, gentle disembodied flock
like the paper lamp he clicks off every night
he and yellow light looking into my eyes just before
dark silence takes the room against its chest
like the woodstove with its hunger
its winter mouth, its flickering tongue
licking at what’s left of trees to warn us
like the truck, the roaming growl of his truck
announcing him for miles across the foot
of this mountain, a voice delivering him to me
like the secondhand couch we once argued about
now a wide lap of ease, worn out by our bodies
sinking toward the center gap, each other
like the convection oven god who serves
us orange salmon on blue plates, or the black pan
who kisses our green chicken eggs good morning
disrobed of the mundane, walking out, what more
could such gods do or say or want, these gods in Things
who love in such excruciating detail they stay
hunger and heat
too cold to lower the honeycomb blind
the suet basket hangs empty for weeks
as if, when I am not a window witness
of their frozen feast, the nuthatch
pinon jay and chickadee are not hungry
after supper haiku
the kitchen faucet drips songs
upon the pool in a soaking pot
the scent of spent soup, a soul