poems by rachel kellum
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The Flood
We doubted the water would come
and slept without clothes—
the privilege of the blithe and warm.
Valuables left down low,
we slept, sure four miles
of rising plains would swallow
the river, its tossled snakes
and mountain limbs, long
before it swallowed ours.
You folded into night and me,
Scant light, our fragile boat.
Uneasy waking, 3 a.m.—
highway and house
without a hum. No semis.
No power. No water pump.
(Proud child of apocalypse, I had filled
the jugs despite your gentle jibe,
Oh, baby, we won’t lose electricity.)
Curiosity dressed and drove
us to the bridge they wouldn’t let us see.
Fat men and flashing sent us home.
We never saw it rise, love, but of course it rose
a mile wide. Next morning, yesterday’s
unconcerned cows grazed on higher ground.
I only dreamed it dark and slow,
inching up the edges of my low-banked
mind, the cool swell eating my
silent roads and fish bone shores,
forcing us north of the river, of towns—
for three days, bridgeless, blessed.
Drinking from the hard well,
Love wrung out our water
while others fell and homes molded
one hundred miles west.
I’m not sorry they were blissful days.
Is that horrible to say?
2013
Broke Road
the subject line:
Broke Road
the photo: a common
place we can’t go
like me: small cliff
and shallow waterfall
the center line:
beauty eaten yellow
2013
after the South Platte flood
Because You Heard My Name in Many Questions
for Kim
Electric sky fast conduit of friendship. Names fly.
Straddle mountains. Plains. Hunch prayers. We finally say.
Look! White hair on Goethe’s half-gods. White is also blue.
Poem me. Halves just smaller wholes and you. Heroes.
Satisfied. Sorrow the sweet fat. Sky the root.
2013
Ceci n'est pas un poème
In this kind of gameless happiness,
Words are all Magritte said they were.
In love, forget Platonic essence.
Poet, the mountain needs no prophets;
The prairie already has cows.
Which one am I?
2013
American Gothic Koan
How many cicada midnights
in the history of hotwired pastures
love and basketball
have a black man and a white woman
shot bent hoops with a spilt egg moon
off a Farmall tractor?
2013
To Be Crossed
A small herd
Of red cows gather
To watch me
When I walk away from
Your gentle apology.
Watching them
Watch me cry
The space between us
Is very empty
And clean.
I purely burn
The way yesterday
Morning’s heifer
Bellowed for a white bull
Across the road.
Both kicked dirt
Over their own backs,
Stamped earth,
Threw back
Huge heads.
His rusted barbs,
Her buzzing wire,
Asphalt incomprehensible
To desire,
But there, nonetheless.
2013
Throat's Shadow
Suprasternal notch—
pulsing pool of pores and light
waiting for this tongue.
2013
Constituents
The map was made of west and east.
The net was made of fish.
The step was made of stop and weep.
The meal was made of wish.
The pet was made of no and yes.
The nest was made of new.
The sap was made of me and mess.
The pew was made of you.
2013
a poem made (mostly) of words found in one game of Boggle
Commons
The space around pine needles and verbs,
Around an angry moonlit friend
Becomes a mansion.
I swear, this is no conspiracy of cheerfulness,
But I drag the bloody door of myself through
A bigger door again and again.
Burn through me, lemon, ginger.
Sing through me, blasted mosquito.
Inch through me, lover, legion.
This nameless house.
The shoreless common.
There are lockless ways in.
2013
with thanks to TWR for the phrase of the fourth line