poems by rachel kellum
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Buddha Sends Her Son to Bible School
Morning light is low
And yellow. Dirt roads
Of the small town glow.
Cattle on the outskirts
Shine like gold.
It’s early June.
Buddha drops off
Her son, now eleven,
At Bible School
With his best friend
To learn the stories
From which she grew
Like dandelions.
Everyone needs
Something
In which to root.
From behind the windshield,
She sees young mothers
In long, sleek skirts.
Their hair is clean and filamental.
Their shoulders are not bare.
They carry babes on soft hips,
Hold small, washed hands.
Plump greeters in cartoon t-shirts
Smile at the welcome table.
A breeze moves their white hair
In waves like rows of wheat.
Cowboys for Christ,
A bumper sticker reads.
A puff of cottonwood floats
Through the passenger window,
Past Buddha, out the driver’s side.
The air is so many flowers sweet.
She sees only a peony
The color of lipstick.
Unexpected grief rises in her body
While she drives home.
The joy of congregation.
The shame of we’ve missed you.
The Spirit throbbing her throat.
The day it lost its name.
Perhaps she could return
To church.
One metaphor as good a door
As any,
If one remembers metaphor
Is only a door.
The morning passes.
Later, planting seeds with her
In prairie dirt, the boy confesses:
If the Holy Spirit, that part of God,
Is in each one of us, why do we sing
In soft, high voices “Only God is Holy”?
I don’t like to sing that song.
Later still, sunburnt, the boy
Sips water at the kitchen table,
Speaks of baptism in the name
Of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Buddha asks him, Where’s the mother?
His eyes search the space of the room
As he relates the shortest scripture:
Jesus wept. For Lazarus, his friend.
He then quotes God who spoke in flames,
I am who I am. The bush roared bright with anger.
And further, I am the Lord God,
And there is no other besides me.
Confusing books of the Old and New Testament,
He proudly pronounces numbers after many names,
Uses new words: Isaiah, Exodus and verse.
Buddha remembers when she first learned
I am that I am,
Considers who and that and Popeye’s what.
Her son declares this week
The best of his life
Though neither he nor his friend
Found it fair, at first,
When they didn’t win
A prize by school’s end.
That’s bull, his friend had said.
When their teacher realized
Her mistake, she gave them
Each their just reward:
Matching water bottles
For good behavior
And a flashlight to share
For memorizing God’s word.
There is no belittling light
Of any kind in its becoming sound.
Buddha wakes up
In the way words become flesh
And dwell among us.
2014
Mirror, Mirror
I don’t know what frames me
Or how I lean.
I can’t see myself.
When you look at me,
you see only you.
If you want the truth,
look at me.
Can you say what force contains me?
I will tell you what I see.
You in the room wearing red,
White scarf, blue jeans, black vest.
You have a body this week.
You are pacing.
Glancing at air with friends.
No more. No less.
I don’t know what you are writing.
Whatever it is,
It is not about me.
2014
Vitreous Body
When the pasture has just become
The smallest green promise, a pleasure
For patient rabbits, walk far into it.
Lie down on your back. Do not think
Of soiling your coat in the wet.
It is water. It is making you glass
Looking up so far. Beyond floaters
In your eyes, the sky is a blue field
For dancing sparks, and you,
Still and vitreous as you are,
Are the green, the sparks, the sky
Turning slowly in a space so large
It has no name so has stolen yours.
2014
Geshe-la Speaks of Tibetan Geometry
Seven dust particles equal
one louse egg.
Seven louse eggs equal
one barley grain.
Seven barley grains equal
the length
of the thumb’s tip segment.
Twelve thumb tip segments equal
the tip of the elbow to the tip of the pinky—
not quite a cubit. Everyone’s cubit is unique.
Four cubits equal
an arm span.
One arm span equals
your height.
The measurements continue
up to the sun.
Tibetan Geometry
is a huge volume!
This thick!
Scientists don’t believe it.
Ha! Ha! Yes.
Nevertheless, five-hundred human heights equal
how far a conch sound travels.
Eight conch sounds equal
how far we can see, a distance we call paktse.
Eighty-four thousand paktse equal
the size of Mt. Meri, the central mountain.
Our globe is south of there.
Thus begins the Mandala of Universes:
twenty-five up,
twenty-five deep.
These fifty are one thing.
And one-thousand of these one-things
is one-thing:
The first of a thousand universes.
2014
With thanks to Geshe Yungdrung Gyaltsen
Commons
The space around pine needles and verbs,
Around an angry moonlit friend
Becomes a mansion.
I swear, this is no conspiracy of cheerfulness,
But I drag the bloody door of myself through
A bigger door again and again.
Burn through me, lemon, ginger.
Sing through me, blasted mosquito.
Inch through me, lover, legion.
This nameless house.
The shoreless common.
There are lockless ways in.
2013
with thanks to TWR for the phrase of the fourth line
Resorption
One does not lay burning things aside.
Like words,
One fire eats another fire, grows,
Wears a robe that cannot clothe but smoke.
Blow the sage and juniper.
Invent purity.
Throw the rice and butter,
All the lumps of sugar in at once.
Pretend we eat.
We’ll still be hungry,
Playing sated
When the coals are cold.
One wind resorbs the forest whole.
You harvest words from flaming bushes,
Feed us to the mirror world.
There you are, again, again,
In photos with black skeletons.
We eat you.
2013
Bright Bowls
My body
A fairy tale
I tell myself
In sinew
Ache
And bloody
Bones.
Your hands
The ink
Translation
I offer
Sentience
In frighteningly
Bright bowls.
2013
Geshe-la Speaks of Measurement
…Cubits warp / For fear to be a king.
~ Emily Dickinson, “We never know how high we are”
We don’t need feet
Or meters in Tibet.
My mother gave me space
Between elbow and fingertip.
2013