poems by rachel kellum
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Resorption
One does not lay burning things aside.
Like words,
One fire eats another fire, grows,
Wears a robe that cannot clothe but smoke.
Blow the sage and juniper.
Invent purity.
Throw the rice and butter,
All the lumps of sugar in at once.
Pretend we eat.
We’ll still be hungry,
Playing sated
When the coals are cold.
One wind resorbs the forest whole.
You harvest words from flaming bushes,
Feed us to the mirror world.
There you are, again, again,
In photos with black skeletons.
We eat you.
2013
Bright Bowls
My body
A fairy tale
I tell myself
In sinew
Ache
And bloody
Bones.
Your hands
The ink
Translation
I offer
Sentience
In frighteningly
Bright bowls.
2013
Without Water
“We die without water,” Rosemerry read by the river.
But I am not thinking of the fact that, indeed,
If we do not drink water, we will die.
Instead, I am remembering the water
You couldn’t swallow, that dripped off
Your cracked lips. Your cloudy, tearless eyes.
Our quiet mother holding a full glass so near your face.
2013
Tavern Tattoos: A Communion
Sitting here in my old drawings,
every one carefully clothed,
I watch braver, bare arms
fold across chests,
raise boisterous hellos over heads,
stretch wide and slow to find
an old lover’s full-sleeve embrace.
His three of swords in her poppy field.
Her ravens clawing his cross.
He buys her a beer.
Their pulses retrace
the sharp, blue story
of love fading,
lost in new needled filigree.
Skin pictures never stop breaching
their own boundaries,
whispering like prisoners,
raised like braille for the unblind,
like prayers no gods but eyes
and hands can hear.
So many gods! Even still,
such prayers often go
unanswered.
November 2012
Curriculum Vitae
I don’t want to tell you
about my happiness,
but listen: I’ve just drunk
rain drops that fell
into my cold Earl Grey,
and the fire-cooled
propane refrigerator
and the wind-cooled
direct current inverter
have just now healed
into self-regulation
after many stop
and start days,
despite the fact
that we gave up on both
last night to kiss
slowly and sleep
when our laptop movie,
Off the Map,
whirred to fade.
Pixels and alternating
currents are easy
to trade for living lips.
Likewise, it is easy
to let wind blow,
to care less
about pages,
my curriculum vitae.
Leonard Cohen said poetry
is just the ash,
evidence of a life
burning well.
Today my ash
is in the wind.
The final wash
of rain has very little
to say.
2013
Breech Birth
Moving out of knowing well,
I moved death into me.
Fed it my home, my poems, my name,
my titles, my children’s security.
I clawed its mouth, crawled down its throat,
snatched up the swallowed tree.
Too far gone, the house spun off—
yellow, light rooms empty.
Death pulled me out of myself by my legs.
Smoothed my hair. Smelled me.
2013
Small and Home
Thrill stirring particles,
gods in fat sky wonder.
(Our happy owl murmurs
of tiny waters and window eyes.)
When our wild family plunges
night, we blossom immense.
Sing yes, we sob, foreverly,
terrifyingly small and home.
2013
Chicken Literal
I am a chicken
With its head cut off.
Watch me bleed.
Don’t bother throwing seeds
Down my neck.
I’m beyond eating.
Now I’m all about
Feet and fleeing.
Flopping useless wings,
Staining feathers
Really nothing more
Than a broken promise
From my broken
Shelled beginning.
Laughing children
Chase me around the yard
Until I fall in the weeds.
I watch them
With my beady eyes
From the sticky block.
The hatchet sun, raised,
For years, aiming.
Take it from me:
You won’t see it drop.
2013
Even Then She Knew
“I no monkey! I balloon!” ~Sage Magdelene, age two
My sweet monkey.
My orange balloon.
She blazes with summer
Wind and yellow truth.
Her red wings roar.
2013