poems by rachel kellum
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Speaking of Houses
Your house is your larger body, said the prophet.
And your lover said: the house is no longer yours
when the sign is on the lawn.
And people walk through
who never invited you in.
And the realtor said they scoffed at the nudes on your walls.
They huffed: inappropriate for a home with children!
And the many armed deities of
myriad joyful capabilities became their demons.
And the unadorned Buddha with loose hair
became naked shame, not bliss unbound.
And they murmured on your stairs. So you
take this and other images down, box them
And laugh that, in closets, they will
still be the clothes of your most open spaces.
2009
Through
Handsome, we never
had a chance. It’s true.
You were lonely alone,
I was lonely in a room
full of people. We made do.
We had no future, no past.
We had it all if all
we needed were two times two blue
eyes, times two empty
hands, times two blue
nights: double duet of thighs
growling too much desert sand,
too different lives unable
to stand together, so we lay
and now the lying is through.
2008
morning toast after a night fight
scrape off what is black
with a quick serrated knife
to save what is soft
2009
To my crow’s feet
You used to only fly from smile
or bright squint. I refused dark glasses,
afraid I’d miss reality, that grass
would be less vivid or artificially more,
or the sky a perpetual storm brewing.
I refused sunscreen, afraid chemicals
would be worse than too much UV.
You dug your toes in deep.
Now, at thirty eight, you do not wait
for smiles and cloudless days. You write
the history of my happiness
like a map, hieroglyphs, Braille.
My blind fingers read your rayed geography
reaching over cheekbones toward windy hair.
I wear dark glasses, slather night
and sun cream, study your slow sure gait.
I’ve cried. But you, you fly, raise
my face, lift my gaze above
what can be seen of me
to the sun of me in your beak.
2010
waiting for poems and a baby from Rosemerry
no poem in words
this morning from you.
perhaps the words whirled
directly into girl upon
your trembling breast.
2008
Sweet
Sweet
Morgan
County, CO
We make sugar here,
watch trucks roll in full of beets,
heading for the billowed white cloud
eight miles away. Think mounds of tan
rotund carrots, not the red obscene. Remember,
these are sugar beets. They sit in piles for weeks,
months on bare ground. Rotting mountains waiting
in rain and snow, majestic beneath beet cloud steam.
Maybe your sugar comes from some exotic island,
not from the great western plains where high school
cheerleaders spell in short skirts and autumn rosy
cheeks: B-e-e-t D-i-g-g-e-r-s, BHS, BHS, BHS! Yes!
Have you ever breathed the powdered air of a beet
town, or been surprised by the symmetrical stench
of pyramidal piles of white beet lime? Or walked
antique Escheresque factory steps where grated
steel winds and leads beet workers nowhere,
insured? Come see what sugar does, how it
makes women’s bottoms blossom in
community college hallways,
men’s eyes roam, children
run, and my coffee
so sweet. Come,
share a cup
with
me.
2007
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