poems by rachel kellum
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Waking up on my 39th birthday
Yellow white light, unknown birds,
first sight, first sound, first
day of my fortieth year.
Somehow, my boys also woke
naturally , sparing me the normal
morning routine, the horrible beep, beep, beep.
Happy birthday, Mama, from the fifteen year old
girl I never see. Happy birthday, Mom, from the small boy, seven,
sockless, descending stairs, otherwise fully dressed.
Happy birthday, Mommy, from the big boy, ten,
with a kiss. And O! the small boy announced,
It is Poem in Your Pocket Day! I am shocked.
After four decades, this much bliss!
We found and pocketed four poems,
walked four ways into morning, into this.
She has fallen out of love
When he felt the cloud kiss his cheek
that morning at the pond, and the boys
wouldn’t hush, and it didn’t matter
as he cast and cast around his fly,
flying mobius band of glinting light,
he didn’t know his wife would cry
in bed that night: she feels caught.
He would carefully listen
and carefully respond
as eleven years have taught.
She would hold her forehead
with her palm in the dark.
She would tell him all the muddy
catfish snags of her love,
all but the one that would snap
the line, rip the hook from her heart.
Reluctant Sonnet While Drinking Microbrewed Beer in Boulder
My mouth has been a cobwebbed house for
days. This limping heart: iambic, pacing
halls of broken words, then quickly racing
to thesaurus’ closed red doors.
I’ve never felt so linguistically poor,
searching pockets bare so I may sing
of scribbled on receipts that may ring
true, not leave me searching more.
It’s this damn Petrarchan sonnet!
Snotty tyrant dictating my rebel day
into perfect stanzas, rhythm, rhyme.
Only brew has helped me force the form upon it.
Screw this puzzle! I’ve got more to say
than can be squeezed into this fourteenth line.
Weeping Fig
Spiraled
Ficus Benjamina,
I imagine your roots
A fisted knot, pushing
Against walls of ornate
Pot, unable to outgrow it, unable
To live outdoors. Still, you push
Out leaves on dying twigs,
Drop them, crispened
Handkerchiefs.
Meditation on white until the waiter dropped a saucy fork
I never wear white or when I
do, it is with vigilant
suspicion of small
hands smeared
with jelly, paint or random
child-loved condiments.
I erased white
from my wardrobe
when I gave birth.
Nearly fifteen years
of colored clothing and
lately, mostly brown
and black. Why?
What turn has brought
me down
to muted hue,
or hue’s lack?
But today—divorce,
fathers far away,
three children gone
for days—has brought me
white! All day in white!
Woven light
cool cotton blouse,
buttoned bright summer, sheer
over flesh and self-conscious
underthings. White
as baptism for the living
and dead, white as a virgin’s wedding
gown, white as a sadhu’s ash-
smeared head. O! The righteousness
of white! The innocence! I feel
reborn! Until
now: two
hours from midnight,
my short shoulder sleeve splashed
red. Red! My mother always
said it was my true
color.
Small Town, Wide Range
Brush.
Its name its natural landmark:
Fields of undifferentiated sage
Whose pungent shadows
Stoically quake in ammoniacal air,
Wrap around calculated corners
Of feedlots and whispering cornfields,
Not daring to grow along herbicidal sidewalks.
People are born, grow old, and die here.
Running, then walking, then wheeling and finally
Wheeled around their last days in one of a dozen sterile
Hallways heralded by this home of nursing homes.
People come to Brush to die, just ask longtime locals
Or restless folk seeking teaching experience
Before they move on, back to cities or mountain hamlets
More brilliant for the existence of Brush.
I have not come here to die, but to live in hushed streets,
Empty after dark, where windows blaze blue
And small town sky stars yield to American Idol’s.
Where are the poems hiding? I didn’t want to find them, at first.
It was easier to find a poem in Crested Butte
Or Red Feather Lakes. Even their names are poems.
There, poems yodel from pine needles, dawdle
In strobed dapple of aspen leaf shadows, jaunt
Across meadows with proud antlers, sparkle
Off spectacular peaks, tremble in our knees.
But we are not a hamlet nestled in the cupped hands
Of mountains. Our poems lie low to the ground, strangled
In language unspoken in Vail, Aspen, Boulder, whose travelers,
If they linger, if monolingual, hear a mumbled muddy Nothing
On our littered river trail. Their adrenaline loving fingers demand:
Where is rock climbing, white water, white slope? West of here,
We say, and they go home. You have to live here a while to see
Where poems hide. And even then, you have to polish your own
Damned dullness before they shine. I know. Cupped in crooked
Knuckled sagebrush sleeps a dusty wood, a hapless, unhurried,
Bird-loved river. Flat, sandy, downright swampy when you walk
Along it in places. Between quiet columns of mullein wait
Drab flat stones, cheerful lost paint balls, grey goose feathers
And rusted bullet casings. I’m no hunter.
I gather these poems in my pockets, place them, priceless
In the hands of my young boys, who, respectively, skip, pop,
Ruffle and arrange like silos these forgotten leavings, finding
Their final use: joy.
Earth holding earth
My young daughter asked me on a cliff edge
what happens when we die. People believe
many things, I said. That we fly off as spirits
to God, or are reborn to live a new life,
but the only thing I know for sure
is that we go back to the earth,
like the log we found becoming dirt,
like the little trees sprouting from its core.
I don’t want to become leaves and soil, she cried.
And I cried, rocking her in my arms, earth already falling through.
When I sit quietly and you
When I sit quietly and you
aren’t there so rush in suddenly, more,
nothing is quiet in my heart, or the quiet is so large
it pushes water from me
in a resounding wave of joy: I won’t
tell you. It is mine. Telling sucks the wave back to sea.
I would rather feed you
what the wave does to me. Kiss it
upon your shoulder in a grocery store, share it
in the larger bite,
breathe it upon your cheek at night
this wave that carries me always to your shore.
Carry me at your hip
A long strapped
Soft leather purse,
Or Guatemalan fabric bag.
Whatever you prefer.
I’d even be blood red
Polyvinyl Beijo* for you.
Reach into me
For keys.
This one opens
Your backdoor eyes.
This one
Your front door smile
This one
Your Cadillac heart.
Maybe pink. Guzzler
Of liquid word dreams.
Lay me down
In the passenger’s seat.
Drive slow,
All around
the town of Fort Metaphor
and Outer Suburban Simile.
You, the mayor
Of polysyllabic mystery
Inspiring your holy citizenry.
There’s a mirror in me.
Here, study
Your pores.
Shake the cold
From your hair.
Glide this shine
On your lips
And speak.
*Bay-ZHOO: 1. A kiss 2. a lawful kiss, never worth as much as a stolen one 3. handbags designed by one mother for other mothers, many with a singular pearlescent finish.