poems by rachel kellum
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Kate Chopin’s Women
When you can’t listen to any more
love songs and the ones in your head
have begun to fade, and your lover has stopped
singing about you, and reticent letters have come
to an end, and your children are seldom
adorable, and your husband only
a friend, disappointment gently gives
way to weightless, faceless grace.
There is nothing to be unmade. Nothing
about which to be jaded. Nothing
from which to run. Nothing
for which to wait. Unsolved,
you just stay. Watch
the day. Play at words.
Maybe pray to recall
how to love in this strange
place, or at the edge
of your mind, swim away.
2007/2011
My child teaches the wisdom of no escape
In the bath tub he makes magic
potion with shaving cream.
“It can turn people into bears
and fish and fleas,” he says.
“May I have some?” I ask.
And add, “I want to be a bird.”
He pulls the frothy bottle close
to his chest, hand over its lip,
grins, “No…you’d never be
our mom… ever again.”
And I am pegged. Does he know
I want to fly away? Not forever.
Just today. And maybe tomorrow.
Or a week. No, a year. West of here.
“Can you make a potion that wears
away so I can turn back into me?”
He shakes his head no. I smile and leave
him singing of bees. I think, he is right,
there is no getting away from me.
2007
with thanks to Samuel Rune
thumbnail
Pink sun rising over cuticle sill,
rosy flesh beneath transparent window of you,
why have I never wondered that you spread
across raw skin, reach beyond round tip,
produce opaque crescent moon waxing toward
necklace clasps, stubborn stickers, scabs and
itching skin, not useful like your four sisters,
but useful nonetheless, scratching unconvincingly
where they reach to scratch, an afterthought,
sometimes not joining in scratching at all. Lazy?
I think not. You have your own mind. You simply ride
the thumb, that famous digit that makes us
what we are, fumbling, reluctantly following others
to find purpose. When needed, though lonely,
you do what needs done, and it is enough.
2008
When a love can find no ground
When a love can find no ground
it sends pale roots through empty spaces:
arid dusty closets, musty basement trunks,
between forgotten hardback books,
looking for water. You feed it spit
and tears, visit its translucent limbs alone,
refuse to prune, watch it wither finely
into spindly filigree, lovely for wanting
to live and dying so quietly.
2008
Small Town Wrestling Sestina
It’s hard to write a poem in a room
full of small sweaty boys and the smell
of bleach. Parents line the walls on mats
like lazy Buddhas with bad backs.
Boys wear spandex short-legged jumpsuits, tight
and low cut across flat chests.
And my son, age eight, wiry heavy weight, wore on his chest
between nipples a temporary Tinker Bell tattoo, tight
when he stretched, wrinkled as he crawled across mats.
A muscled father, upon seeing it, patted his back
and said, Cover that up. So he did. I can smell
the homophobic sweat of men across the room.
In this small Republican town, there isn’t much room
to be wide. We live inside windows too close, tight-
lipped in suffering, good neighbors. We back
each other up. The thin man against the wall three mats
down removed my gall bladder last year, saw my tattooed chest,
breasts sagging sideways above inflated belly, smelled
the air escape my hissing body, not to mention the smelly
little polyped pouch that housed my bile. His and my chest
heave with pride while our sons collide in tights,
practice domination on maroon wrinkled mats.
We yell with shaking limbs across the room,
Throw a half nelson! Keep him on his back,
Son! And the weekends accelerate back to back.
I miss his second meet, stuck in a conference room
in Denver. Almost home, driving down our street, I see the medal on his chest,
dull faux gold, second place, he smiles through crooked teeth. He smells
clean, says he was beat by a boy from Sterling 5 to 3. Slamming fists on the mat,
I learn later over beer, our son wrestled through his furious tears. My throat tight
to hear the way he growled, scowled and fought to breathe through tight
angry lungs, hyperventilating, flung the undefeated boy across relentless mats,
spun away and sobbed without shame, fiercely wriggling off his back,
one of two kids never to be pinned by this lonely champion black-chested
kid wrestling through a sea of white skin. So small across the room,
the referee raised his thin arm high, armpit wearing the smell
of victory. On the edge of the mat, back against his father’s chest,
finally finding his breath, our tight-limbed smelly boy made himself room.
2008
Never let him build
a house of you, my dear.
He would steep in you, forever
train you dark and bitter (See
the stain ring!) unless you pull
the string, wring him out from time
to time, and point toward the sea.
Remind him you are no house,
no fragile cup, but rain soaking
needles, the mother of cones
spreading seeds, a lover of heat,
waiting for fire to scorch
and breed what you drop.
You are the work of green.
In the beginning
If
for whatever reason
when I grew from colliding invisible cells
one a drifting still cocoon
one a swimming moon with tail
both composed of hugging
trembling molecules
and
smaller still
atoms
charged planets chasing each other
in vast microscopic space
around endless little suns
little suns just more empty space
glowing inside with quarks
self existing lights in space reaching
for other lights
colliding
dividing
multiplying
always beginning and dying
then I am satisfied it all begins
like this
for whatever reason
though I like to think it is love.
2010
three degrees below freezing: if there is light enough to see
It is cold. People are careful,
wear more clothes than are comfortable.
We wrap arms around ourselves
and lean into the warmest places
we find, and in these places
still find cold around edges,
seeping through seams,
or deep in the core of things
we thought would always burn.
We lean for a long time and wait
for heat to build on heat.
It usually does.
We want to think we are earths
crusted around molten cores
of roiling light. But that light is dark
inside. And though we say it is, it isn’t light,
it’s heat we seek in times like these.
We trust the deep fire of the body,
of each others’ bodies, to deliver, and
hope the heat is light. In heat lives the body,
in the body: light the eye can’t see
until we break open and what’s inside seeps
slow amber glowing. Here, I have broken,
come warm your hands, read by me.
2007
Listen
The world requires doing and noise.
And when doing slows,
and sound,
sound moves around inside. We want
to follow
where it goes and get
lost in a decade old desire—
blue eyes
just before the mourning dove
kiss, or
in the mist of the next decade when no
young boys
will thump through
the silence
holding them like a mother who listens
and knows why
there is war in the world.
We cannot
stop it, and neither can she,
these ornaments of silence, ringing.
We can only notice spaces
between, silence
underneath,
hold them,
release.