poems by rachel kellum
to comment ✒️ click on a title
I danced around
I danced around
him because he
was a good lead.
I danced a dance
I couldn’t hear inside.
I could only follow,
and follow with halting
feet. A man likes to teach.
His hand on my lower
back, a nudge,
spin out, then tug,
dip, reach. I did it well
enough and smiled
for the show. I tried to add my own
steps, but bruised
his toes. I danced five,
then ten feet away,
and he stopped dancing
entirely. He watched.
He always said
he didn’t like to dance
alone. Someone laughed
at him as a child.
But I’ve always preferred to dance
solo. And when he
slowly worked his turns back
into mine, my hair
fanned out as he spun me round.
Back in his arms I
pushed him down, crawled up his legs
and spine, held his head
to the ground. Though he is strong,
he stayed there
long enough for me to run,
booed off the stage.
When he finally stood,
he didn’t cry or bow
and the crowd went wild.
2010
I was planted and my roots grew
That is what roots do.
Saguaro drowning in a swamp.
Arnica wilting on a beach.
Redbud leeched on desert plains.
Yet reaching into earth,
for sun, for what we need.
Where is the shovel?
Where are my hands?
These needles, this heart leaf,
these buds, too anemic,
too deep to wrench out
of ground and leave.
January 2010
Harvest
Just when you’ve finally grown sure hanging,
the vine drops you full of juice, your deepest hue.
Or else, a hand you’ve no eyes to see tests your edges
firm, tender, perfect and plucks. Everything moves
around your disorientation, your unleashed shape.
You reach for what held you, what you held safe.
The architecture is gone.
Next you lose your green head, your yellow core,
your bottom edge. When you think it can get no worse,
the plunge into searing heat. Skin flays open
at your neck. In a flash, you are out, embraced
by strange cool, bumping into peers, everyone weeping.
Hands gently peel back your skin, a sound sighs
surprised pleasure in your silken flesh, nerves a net
holding seeds. Sheer exposure. The air receives
your glistening. Listen to the silence of your new body,
tucked into a pocket window, saved for some future
feast in which every living being is your guest.
2011
he even changed the way we grieve
we waited all night
for our network lives to load
while the world sighed Steve
electrically,
touching screens, the space between
our thumbs, widening
6 October 2011
two days (and you still haven’t put up the tomatoes)
When you’ve shredded five zucchini,
for sixteen loaves of bread,
When you’ve wrestled the machine
to snake the clot you dread,
When you’ve folded all the laundry,
graded papers, sighed and read,
When you’ve dusted all the shelves
and through lone hours, bled,
When you’ve walked the limping dog,
changed the sheets of your sweet bed,
rest in it.
2011
Gossip: Another Way to Sky
Another Way to Sky, oil on canvas, 36''x36'', Rachel Kellum
If you live free, know this:
your life is the jailor’s grist
served in hot whispers
to prisoners she keeps and is.
When she offers you
a plate, don’t eat.
Despite her smile,
it is full of spit.
Fly on the outside,
on the cloud’s upside.
Grin. Write it:
I’ve nothing to hide.
2011
when you pass through me
as a flock of ones and zeros
the ones become your fingers
your black eyelashes the Ls
in your night strummed lullaby
the zeros our morning mouths
when you pass through me
pixilated blue eyed glint
your digital dimple touches
my screen lips and my heart
skips a rope of ones and zeros
when you pass through me
your name a blinking bouquet
of ones and zeros my right knee
buckles to kneel to ask deep space
to marry me always it says yes
2011