poems by rachel kellum
to comment ✒️ click on a title
two haiku for birds
rain from the gutter
sings through night’s open windows
sparrows miss the sun
wrens wait for clear light
inside wet cottonwood trees
the whole town sings, come!
2008
magnetic poem one
Brilliant popsicle scent
Of carnival child
Murmurs time
Drips eternal corn
Remember the puddle
2010
we trade one kind of happiness for another
This:
Your husband making sweet and sour chicken,
taking the children fishing or doing laundry while you read
to them of conches, of a Hindu prince who runs, while a raven eats away
your heart, pecking for missing pomegranate seeds,
finding only poems. He blinks. You blink. He flies away. You turn
from your husband’s touch. It is too much, or not enough.
The shared smile over children may be, but you and he
don’t fly touching wings despite trying.
For this:
Your husband flown the nest. Your heart a full fruit in four hands, burst,
staining walls with blood thrown stars every morning, every time you
crack it between thumbs from whom poems have temporarily fled
into folded laundry’s lights, darks and reds, into tired Illinois menus
of pork pot roast, potatoes, frozen pizzas and children (hold them
tighter) punching to grab your eyes bedazzled by sunrise over skin,
by a Hindu prince who runs and returns, runs and returns,
and a raven who no longer blinks and burns.
2008
undressed on a morning precipice
I ask you sun
to seep into my deepest
nightbound spaces
those that clench in breath held ribs,
hide hunched fear in shoulder
blades. I await
you where the blood is made
and cleared, those places
I take for granted
like a too good husband
or plain faced wife.
Grant me a willingness
to slow, to know
my ripened breasts
as perfect currents
waiting for bears,
that the smooth soil
of my liver filters
with ease, filling the roots
of my being of countless beings
with your liquid gifts.
Lift my arms to your warm kiss.
Lie upon my chest.
Brighten every hair
(what endless tender antennae!)
My smallest voids receive you
there, blessed.
2007
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).