poems by rachel kellum
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the myth of blue blood
from the base of a remote mountain
named for the blood of Christ
in bed, over bagels, chicken soup, stir fry
we stare into our palms
watch protests on screens
city streets pumping people, songs, signs
like starved blood toward the heart
of a country no one can find
Hufflepuff Home for the Holiday
My youngest
now a man
spread out
on the basement
couch
with two giants
marbled dogs
Eo and Fang
a fragrant heap
of ten-legged sleep
when we forget to net
robins strip the tree’s
cherries in two days, no jam
no pie, no crumble
How to Handle a Narcissist from Space
Respond to his self-serving praise with a thumbs up.
Say nothing.
Twiddle your thumbs.
Fiddle with the floating mic with your friends:
Stand it up, lay it down, watch it drift, spin it like a drill.
Clap and laugh like kids at these antics while he waits.
Use comm delay to your innocent advantage.
Let him sit in silence a full minute.
Pretend to wonder if you lost contact.
Ask if ground is still on the line.
I am, yes, I am, says the narcissist.
Listen to the crowd laugh on your beautiful planet.
Do not apologize.
See 8:30-10:00 of Trump calls Artemis II astronauts after historic moon flyby: 'We'll plant our flag again'
Christina Hammock Koch, Mission Specialist, Artemis II
Her bare face framed
in a floating halo
of untamed hair
she adjusts her socks
plays with and parts
a shoulder curl, nods
and smiles, like I do
patient, while men talk
about stars, turning
toward black space
lights out, to see them
not twinkling (she shakes
her head, mouths no)
just perfect pinpricks
of light, he says.
Someone, please
pass her the mic.
See Do You Still See Stars In Outer Space? Kid Asks Astronauts Aboard Artemis II
with Yeats
What if every two thousand and odd years something happens in the world to make one sacred, the other secular; one wise, the other foolish; one fair, the other foul; one divine, the other devilish? What if there is an arithmetic or geometry that can exactly measure the slope of the balance, the dip of the scale, and so date the coming of that something? W.B Yeats, A Vision
It didn’t take long for the magpies to come back.
They are not falcons. I call them in with seedy fat.
We live on the widening gyre of justice now,
just outside the narrowing corkscrew tongue of raw power
shrinking like an old god’s cock after 2,000 years,
his self-made cage rattled with raging whimpered tears.
see W. B. Yeats and the Cycles of History for a discussion of the gyre of his famous poem, “The Second Coming.”
dancing while he cooks
two beers
and our wedding
playlist
remind me
of the way hips
butter time
The Beauty Years
In the years of my beauty
like you, I was too thin
waking with shaking arms
sugar starved blood.
A milk jug was too much
for my hand
aching with the effort
of doorknobs, keys, pens.
Early arthritis, I guessed
remembering my mother’s
bent knuckles. It wasn’t.
I was simply starved
but for the gaze of men
trained to like us thin
and weak as little girls.
What a gift are my fifties—
this body filling in, juicy
sweet as a newly wrinkled plum
becoming pink wine
softening my husband’s belly
sip by sip, drunk on me
drunk on him.