poems by rachel kellum
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Clean Haiku
After deep cleaning
the same old house for ten years
it starts cleaning you.
2012
Hopeful Ruin
Looking for what is holy in my aversion,
I close my eyes to take in the burning
of my inner bureaucracy, plastic hallways
puddling in a maze. I leap through oxygen
of a most stubborn desire—the fuel
of my decade-long moment of hopeful ruin.
2012
Catch and Release
We wait for it
The writhing hatch to flow
from fresh mouths
Can’t resist
the fleck, wet wings
quilting light
Hit quick
Hunger numbs
the lip to the nick
Thrill the swim
against our own mouth
and every known current
Pulled by unseen line
into someone’s sight, the pool
of a chest, the net
We pray for wet hands
To be inexplicably held
and slide away unscathed
No hand-shaped cloud
tattooed upon
the skin’s egress
2012
featured in Riseforms
So that I may better love him
The moon in my blood
is not afraid
of the shadowy tents
of your crowded refugee camp,
the stolen doorknobs
of your childhood hospital,
the quiet drawers
of your small corporation,
the crumbling walls
of your rainbow monastery.
It calls them out by name,
locks eyes, says
Tell me why. Take me
to your leader
so that I may kiss
his shining, edgeless face.
2012
with thanks to Valerie Haugen for most of the seventh stanza
Despite
being a child of many pneumonias
bearer of my mother’s tales
of those who fell asleep and never woke
lungs full of death’s water
scarf wrapped tight around neck and mouth
hood up, gloves tucked, buttoned to the throat
I rolled out three forbidden white globes
and made my first frozen man.
A rebel glowing
with countless chest xrays
lungs unstung by cold
I learned how snow sticks to snow
how to tell the truth
of righteous disobedience
for there he stood and I
would not tear us down.
2012
magic for inducing labor
open every cabinet, door
all your precious boxes
kiss the jewels inside their bellies
treasure trunks, unlock them
oil every squeaky drawer
windows, open yawning
overfill your tea cups, bowls
spill them into earthen hollows
belly’s fleshy gate will follow
listen for the ancient knocking
2008/2012
bless the white haired teacher
~for Gary Bloemker
who fills his classroom with stones,
waterfalls and dashing fishes,
who built a golden castle full of books,
stars and pillowed caves
for my son to learn
that earth is the best page
ever written and
school is not a place—
though what a room!—
but a state of curious
grace and bloom.
2009
Vision of the Great Mantra
The lazy, dozing deities
and dull knived killers
of my body
the whining pin throats
and misled, missled gods
of my body
the leg humping dogs
and hand wringing humans
of my body
wear every single cell—
each a full body halo
gone orb rainbow
in the great eye
of my body.
There is no place within
I can’t wake. I walk
through the congregation
of my body
like a forest
where everyone sits
under trees half grinning.
2012
Linguistics Lesson
In the dark in my bed
too late for a full night’s rest
my nine year old son
confessed quietly, brightly:
tomato and potato
have always confused me
but now I see their beginnings
are cousins
and their endings
are twins.
I woke up in the morning’s dark
knowing this is true for all
our beginnings and ends
and touched his sleeping head.
2012