poems by rachel kellum
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Satin Sonnet
We slept on satin midnight blue through wind
and swirling snow though yesterday was warm.
Sleep’s perspiration stubborn on our skin—
a silent echo of the springtime storm.
For satin does not with a body breathe
like cotton with its earthen fibered thread;
it’s made for sliding through and ‘round our need,
not dreaming without reaching ‘cross the bed,
though, we did reach as morning broke the night
and woke dark rivers in our silken arms
instead. We whispered, can this love grow bright,
or does love wane once lovers are disarmed?
No satin can improve our honest love, my love,
just holding on ‘til death says we’re enough.
2007
Because we knew I'd be the one hurt
I want to follow the broken Vs of geese.
I know their awkward hopeful song.
They are flying the wrong way, east,
toward the rising sun. Instead I would go west
where, orange, our hope set. The sun drowned
so beautifully. You snapped a photo and
the night before, the string of possibility,
that white spider’s thread between
hearts and tender intimacy. I resignedly agreed
and bled, not wanting you to see me wrapping
the frayed end around my finger
like a child’s simple reminder
of what to do when the time comes.
Yes, west: I would wade in the place
where the sea once rolled in dark
around my unlawful feet, pulled
ancient sand from a spoiled shore
while you mourned the awful coast
grain by grain out from under me
to help me see.
2008
Were your eyes wet?
I don’t recall.
It was dark
and I was
trying to be
the red cotton
sheet, trying to
move my feet
away from yours
just an inch
where there was
warmth but not
skin. I don’t
recall hearing you
sniff and sniff,
but there was
shaking and I
don’t recall caring
whether you were
cold from the
outside or cold
from far within,
my subzero disappointment
seeping into your
chest between breaths.
I don’t recall
falling asleep but
I did, and
I am still
trying to wake
up from you
or to you
or to fall
deeper into the
cold inside your
tears until you
wake up too.
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