poems by rachel kellum
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Clear Hand
Surely the fall
light sifting
through locust trees
across me
does not pray
to land here,
does not pray
to stay.
Would my eyes
and light
could land
like that,
a clear hand
sliding warm
away.
2012
The Day He Took in the Refuge Tree Thangka
“The Buddha is strong,”
declares my ten-year-old in amazement.
“He has a whole army of buddhas!”
And I take him in my arms,
my body breaking
into companies of cadence.
2012
with thanks to Samuel Rune
Consorts
I’m jealous of monks.
It’s true.
I want to be one,
but I suppose
with breasts
and one void too many
I can be only a nun.
We all can play the skull damaru.
But I want to be with you
in the monastery
where all the teachers live,
singing songs like a baritone hive,
reading ancient texts,
bumping together our bald heads.
Forget the sewing.
In the courtyard
when we debate,
point after point
I will clap my hands
like dry lightning
until we both wake up.
Ha! Ha!
I will paint thangkas,
give buddhas your blue eyes,
but don’t make me
your peripheral, cutting dakini
unless you’ll be mine.
We could take turns being the metaphor,
the center of shrines.
A necklace of heads.
2012
Desire builds a house
of me for you to live in.
Doors are everywhere.
The walls are roaring
flames sucking stale air.
You can’t enter.
I burn myself out.
You’d never know
a house was ever there.
2012
Exodus
My left eye wanders
from what my right eye dreams.
In the mirror, it is a wave
parting in the middle of my face,
my own red sea. Two peoples,
one fleeing, one in chase, both
ignorant, unseeing, make
a pilgrimage from my head
into the cleft of my cathedral
chest where everyone fingers brown
bodhi seeds. When the waters mend
their seam, no one drowns.
2012
No metaphors for
Say hello to the great shining
embroidered with your fleshy personality.
(The shining may be a clear hole, but if that scares you
think instead a rimless, bowlless, friendly bowl.)
I pull at our tight threads with poems.
Unraveling, I talk too much.
I’m paid to tell you what I know, but there are holes
in knowing funneling toward the shining hole,
and you fall through. I can’t catch you.
You can’t catch me.
We think our words are handholds,
or that our hands are words, but they are only bumps
stalling speed so fast it’s empty, so vast
even the sky falls through.
2012
Where Words Wait
When I am nearly quiet
and perfect words appear,
silence is more perfect.
I tuck the precious phrase
behind my ear like windy hair,
or gum to save for later chewing.
I promise words a quick return.
My most important work requires
such wild undoing: an empty mouth.
2012
Hopeful Ruin
Looking for what is holy in my aversion,
I close my eyes to take in the burning
of my inner bureaucracy, plastic hallways
puddling in a maze. I leap through oxygen
of a most stubborn desire—the fuel
of my decade-long moment of hopeful ruin.
2012
Vision of the Great Mantra
The lazy, dozing deities
and dull knived killers
of my body
the whining pin throats
and misled, missled gods
of my body
the leg humping dogs
and hand wringing humans
of my body
wear every single cell—
each a full body halo
gone orb rainbow
in the great eye
of my body.
There is no place within
I can’t wake. I walk
through the congregation
of my body
like a forest
where everyone sits
under trees half grinning.
2012