poems by rachel kellum
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death dream, a token
I was chewing a handful of almonds
when they told me you were dead, love.
My sob forced the solid lump of crumbs
into my hand. I began the slow walk
into your kitchen, the slow collapse.
Knees, belly, face, hands outstretched
to the last place I saw you stand,
left palm touching what had touched
your feet, right hand offering almonds
to the air that once held you, eating.
into back forward and out
your flesh
and clear
water eyes
over me
praying
your body
pouring
soft angles
into mine
flashing
love into
shine
this house leaks
breathes through
cracks between
sliding panes
one hundred
years old.
My bills
are bigger
than they
could be
but wind
seeping in
is free.
2008/2011
key to the kingdom
My students are taught
not
to write passively, in passive voice.
Never
invert the hierarchy. (The subject: You
understood.) I
am told to say objects should not come
before subjects.
In other words, it is best not
to remind
your reader of objects first,
of the dog
run over by the dented car,
or the man
ignored by his wife, smoking
a Camel.
For example, a good academic
would
never say, The forests were stripped,
before the men,
smelling of gas, realized their mistake.
Instead,
we should say, The men, smelling of gas,
realized
their mistake after stripping the forest,
or
The men stripped the forest, and
smelling
of gas, finally realized their mistake.
It is all
about the subject and what he chooses.
Objects
wait at the end. Those who are done unto
do not
take the rightful place of those who do.
Don’t forget this,
children; it’s an important English rule
(though,
true, one often broken by poets).
April Aubade
When you finally
sleep with the
window open in
a century old
house, the itch
of April enters,
a highway breathes
through, trains woo
darkly westward. Come
morning, wood pecker
drills a hole
into your waking
mind. A pin
of light shines.
Air sucks your
closed door against
its frame, trying
to make a
path through you.
Wood knocks wood.
Your metal mechanism
clicks in its
lock, hinges almost
creak. Everything begs
a thin opening.
featured in The Telluride Watch, April 2011
bowl of curlless words
my bowl so full, pours into yours.
dear brother, drink.
hold out your hands, wash your face
in this dripping mirror.
before slipping through, I see you,
believing,
though by circumstance,
and love’s strange
chance, always already leaving.
Midwestern College Town: Decatur, Illinois
Earth spreads out around its brick proud ivory
towers and old neighborhood mansions, beneath small
box businesses, run-down dusty houses and four factories.
Outside, wide fields and leaning barns. Low white winter
sky over all. A shaggy earnest student waiter with pizza
shifts foot to foot, sweet eyed, guesses you’re not
from around here anymore, and the proud
father in orange Illini sweatshirt, clapping
at the open mic, turns to you with smiling
eyes, inquiring, tell me where you are
from. His landlocked twang lies low
to earth, a warm midwestern fondling
of words and slow, thoughtfully round
as a brown clay pot waiting to be filled
with your story, eager to fill you with the
rich soil of his bright son’s cornfed dreams.
benign pineal cyst
~for my mother who cannot sleep
I dreamt
I held her head like a baby,
thinking if I spoke gently
she wouldn’t worry she
had lost her body. Bodiless,
she didn’t notice, but I did. She
should be dead, I thought, though skin
had grown across her severed neck,
thin tissue tendersoft as scars,
so calm. I felt she could live.
Sh, I whispered, brushing hair
back with my palm, kissing
her scented forehead,
It is okay, Mama. You
are okay. There now.
Her expression a child’s
at the breast, eyes wide
and soft in mine, mouth sounds
making less sense, I talked
and rocked.
She slept.
2009