poems by rachel kellum
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Umbilicus
I was important once, not just lumpy scar
hiding in fat, revealing myself in hunger.
Door to a spiral bridge
connecting budding flesh to pulsing organ,
I heard hard boiled eggs and broccoli whisper,
swallowed chocolate flavored blood
to grow this body, a black hole
delivering myself inside out.
Who knew when I began a life link,
I would become a tiny hand holding life’s lint.
I gave you life. You are right
to fill me with jewels.
I am the wounded crown
of your human birth, glorious.
2011
For Sons on Solstice
Because my boys still enjoy me and their smiles
are nearly mine, and summer solstice shines
through trees where thin mosquitoes whine
in shade, I took them to a park eight miles
from home today. With frisbee, rackets, birdie, balls
and wandering black dog, I watched them play and vie
for turns with me, throwing, swinging, thwacking sky
toys. Other children in the park, too small
to make a frisbee glide or birdie fly with ease
wandered in, and my two welcomed awkward play
with saintly patience, relieved to have a break
from brotherly, pleading motherly, disharmonies.
I marvel these two rivals fled my body, display
my wry dichotomies, love and sigh me awake.
2009
The 14th Way of Looking at “August and Everything After”
XIV.
Will summer remember
my feet searching her rivers
for solid earth?
The current was something
like thighs.
The line, my drunken orbit.
2011
for C.S.
Perhaps it is not a giving up, but a giving in
After loving a garden
a long time through hail
and too much rain
or drought and wilting heat,
it is hard to stop watering it,
wishing in it, to know when
to let earth take cucumbers
I let yellow into bitterness
on the stem, comfrey
surrendered to grasshoppers
I could not kill
who shredded leaves to lace
in hope they’d leave basil alone,
rosemary that never bloomed
whose tips I harvested anyway.
Sometimes, when I am tired
of hoping, I begin to pray
for first frost.
2011
The Cricket, after Hafiz
The cricket in my closet
called all night
to his Beloved.
How does one sleep
through such high
pitched prayer?
I awoke alone
in sweet exhaustion,
my Beloved everywhere.
2011
Guest Poet: fey
Our father
who in the name of heaven should call to us but Sister
living somewhere between hiway 85
and kingdom come. she called, trembling. and we
will meet her where
earth as is heaven Three of us united for a day o’er
bread veggies, and rice
our first slumber party in
50 a year. laughing.crying about
food cravings, vacations, illness,
family history, swept secrets, sad eyed
photos
forgiveness
sins talking all at once
listening for once
tapping at gnarled paternal trunks
dreading the dim seeping wound
peeling back bark as night falls
hearing muffled snap of dark sap
lead us into temptation of hatred and anger, incrimination
we coo, a Trinity, we soothe:
delivered from Evil he is no Danger to us now.
for we are
The Power of wind quelled quaking aspens and
The Glory of tall wild grasses.
We keen in a
Hallowed sorrow circle
the plea of
our father a distorted lament
done
forever.
2011