poems by rachel kellum
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October Monarch
because Becca found cancer in October, when I always remember
There are butterflies
in my stomach— chrysalis
ache of acid turning
bitter legged worms into monarch
wings. I throw back my head
gaze at sky, open wide my mouth
let in light. They crawl my column
of breath past teeth
and tongue, perch on parched
lips, unfold and dry. Then one
by one leap! flutter! wing away
to warmer climes where they
eat flowers, lay eggs in someone
else’s grief and quietly die.
2010/2011
The End of Daylight Savings
My hunkered shadow drives ahead of my speed
strange ear to the grey road, always listening
for the west in the eastern way I go.
And I wonder what is east in me, what sunrise
I avoid in blood beating west west west.
Why must I always long to live in sun set
when I know there is truly no disappearing
light, just a constant circling, my own looking
up and out, away from sun dial feet.
2011
Child
You are a walking sky
I’ve learned to fly through
my trepidation dragging storms
then light and red kites, murmurations
parting and mending like night swarms
sometimes a dark hawk riding heat
over the smallest of prey
or the day’s yellow promise
spreading warm for two ravens
cawing in outward circles of awe.
My personal turbulence, drops
in pressure, weather of my own
parents’ hungry patterns now mine.
Let them go. They are not you, or me.
I am just another sky joining yours.
We are the beginning of a widest blue.
(Please, my dear, do as I say, not as I do.)
2011
One Decade of Bones
Years ago they met on a washboard road,
their hair and his beard flying. Her springtime lover gone,
she meant to build her wooden house alone.
She didn’t. He helped her raise her cabin’s ribs.
She helped him give his cabin skin. Her lover returned.
His wife remained. Surprised, they found one day each other’s arms.
He said he didn’t think ahead of decades.
We’re already decades apart, she said.
Each time they met in wind must be enough.
She came to the mountain to spend herself, not him,
but now she wonders where their bones will crumble.
She feels hers, strong, through stubborn muscle,
squeezing arm or calf to reach past ache.
In other places bones are merely draped
with resigned skin: wrists, ribs, collarbones and hips.
She strokes these desolate bonescapes,
echoes his hands, his hands, their wind,
imagining their bond beyond reproach.
They cannot ask their arms not to recall
the song of mourning doves,
the fall, the fall, the fall.
And that is not enough!
There must be time for more than this, my love,
more kisses for our teeth and lips, don’t go.
I see a bright disease inside your eyes
Your crow’s feet sharp, your flesh revealing bone
Is this the lonely way we leave our homes?
She knows, too well, how many times she dies each year,
wonders, despite her skin: can he already hear
the winds moan low and through me without him?
2007
Public Dénouement
Error’s always waltzing
with my shine.
Hidden dancing knots the
risky twine.
2011
Sometimes Women
For Susan, who frames spun mud and grass pulled from tiller tines and says they are like the way we spin and spin into certain things, making them tighter
Sometimes, after our babies die and the grief wraps around
every small dying thing, women feed worms to fallen baby birds
that won’t thrive, and, sobbing, smash their skulls with a garden rock
under the neighbor’s lilac. I couldn’t save you, we cry, and bury them there
because we’ve already buried so many in our own borders.
Sometimes, women must tell their fourteen year old daughters
we no longer love their fathers, and the girls wear pennies in their shoes
to heal the broken wing of the thing, but we leave anyway, and find
or become love, while their fathers wonder what went wrong and weep.
The daughters decide not to keep the pennies.
Sometimes, when the peppermint reaches too far beyond borders, choking
the thyme we have planted, women pull it, then poison it, against
our better judgment, and still it returns like spring. We eat of it
when there is nothing else, search for the acrid chemical on our tongues,
wonder if we have also poisoned ourselves.
Women share these things over creamy coffee, or peppermint tea,
and our liquid sorrow lifts from us, sometimes, like steam.
2009
tenth year flame
I am gathering the coals of us, love.
Remember how we used to rub our minds together and burst
Into gentle suns? Our bellies, never a bonfire, too sensible
For such waste, but a mountain campfire banked by handpicked stones:
A first kiss on the cheek, your confident guitar, my tentative drum
(Such musical foreplay in our throats), our poems– yours earthen, mine boats,
March powwows too bright, passed flowers on careful desert hikes
Collecting concretions and moon clouds.
Too many moons I have idly tended our glowing reds,
Handed mine out to likely, lonely passersby,
Leaped our rocky circle, started rambling grasses afire.
You have watched, awaited my whetted burn and wet returns.
Creeping from connubial containment, I return, I return.
Crackling here quietly with you, warming our children’s hands
And faces, becoming the flame of the sacred mundane, the play
Of bodhisattvas and saints.
Why then do I resist and scatter? Was I meant to be a running
Forest fire consuming bodies and pretty chatter?
A lithe Zippo coquette flipping spark to lips and lips and lips?
Surely I was made for more than this, yet this.
I am looking for tinder and kindling, love,
But have used up what is near. I must walk long
Nights into howling woods of hungry cells,
Gather lies of discontent and selfishness.
Will these burn forever? Toss in aversion for good measure.
But the stench! Worse than piss fir. Still I search.
Plentiful the sage, the sweetgrass of my heart,
Throw it in and pray, throw it in: we are a prayer.
2007
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