poems by rachel kellum
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tweeze
I bring travel tweezers downstairs from his bathroom to return
to my wallet’s zippered coin purse for emergency rear view mirror
tweezing. I never know when my eyebrows will sprout black secrets.
I stop to check my email first, read an inbox poem about white horizons,
follow a link through Roethke on cliches, to one about a mother who can’t stay,
or even say, enough already, quiet please, I’ve nothing to do with nonsense poetry.
I notice my left hand, silver tweezers still half pinched, poised to pluck.
becoming colorado plainsong
I never meant to stay so long, friends,
but while I’m here
I’ll let this sky
carve of me
a wide
bowl
holding nothing
with room enough
for every little thing.
It is possible my children will burn
It is possible my children will burn
my journals, my life’s mess, full
as they are of horrible confessions
and scratched out words. Perhaps
this is best, that they have their own
ideas of me, rather than my ideas
of myself. Both are just as dim
and broken, iridescent and flash.
Memories, propped up things
in dusty light and fingerless black.
in Disney World, waiting for nigiri, sipping Ichiban, enduring karaoke
On a stage
two children
sing
we
are
the champ-
ions
off key,
and finally
there is
authenticity
in this too
perfect world
built for them
and their parents’
money.
2010
thanks giving
I give thanks for my young boys’ muscled limbs
and taut bellies, their shameless animal ferocious grace,
gentle eyes promising gentle men, tender, telling more than war.
I give thanks for my daughter’s shy embrace
for the careful way she still arrives, touching hesitant edges
as we sleep, backs of hands, knees, feet, child-woman in mother-woman’s reach.
I give thanks for my lover’s slow speed
the open space he keeps, an ever present doorway
welcoming this tired mother, this freeway, this bending, stubborn glee.
2009
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