poems by rachel kellum
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Barnyard Light the Professor
Please have your fingers prepared
To take notes in the dirt.
Even though the moon,
Sharper than I, distracts you,
Pretend to be writing.
Today we will discuss hyperbole.
Consider yourselves, crouched there
Like clocks. Your long darkness—
An arm counting eternity.
2014
Hippocampus
Our seahorse
unbound
from steady center
bled a slow sound
like low blood sugar.
Sad to be found
in loss, we hum
with the singing wound,
tails clinging.
2014
Barnyard Light the Brother
Though half-joking you
Call me the murder light,
The murderer lurks
In your own masked skull.
I’m only half sorry my shine
Skips your shade helter skelter
When the barn’s darkest thought
Out-paces your heart
And your stomach thrills
Safe at the farmhouse door.
2014
Barnyard Light the Poet
I write illegible poems with shadows I cast
Over scrambled coyote and rabbit tracks.
I cannot hear the eerie yips and blood squeal,
But see the mouths, two kinds of many ears
Cast up toward the moon, my deaf mother,
Whose endless crawling shadows shudder.
2014
On Her Choice of Orange Home Décor
Her:
Are you gonna hate this?
Him:
Only if you leave me.
2014
Vitreous Body
When the pasture has just become
The smallest green promise, a pleasure
For patient rabbits, walk far into it.
Lie down on your back. Do not think
Of soiling your coat in the wet.
It is water. It is making you glass
Looking up so far. Beyond floaters
In your eyes, the sky is a blue field
For dancing sparks, and you,
Still and vitreous as you are,
Are the green, the sparks, the sky
Turning slowly in a space so large
It has no name so has stolen yours.
2014
Ars Poetica
When Lou Reed died, the raven told me:
Toss the empty chambered thirty-eight
Into the red blender with a bruised Peruvian mango.
Blend on high speed. Break the blender.
Drink the poem, sweet and sharp, a threat.
It will grow in you like a landslide. Bury
the living, exhume the dead, the raven said.
She never shuts up, pelts: no one survived
The flight, so write, as if this horrible news
Is a foil thing to stash like treasure or trash.
Orion hunts the nest with arrow pen.
And Tapihritsa, upon attaining rainbow body
Didn’t bother sniffing the pits of his abandoned robes.
He didn’t say a thing about the new Snow White,
Or snow, or white, or Lou Reed’s raven scarf,
Or any of the missing dead. All is all he said.
Thus my work is cut. I will replicate Amor
And Psyche’s melting jalus strokes with my life.
I will drink water like a witch and spit words
Like broken teeth. The teeth will say two things:
One. You didn’t have to move. Rest. It is best
To be still without leaning on anything else.
Two. Rest the word against anything.
Your emptiness is not the only medicine.
2014
NaPoWriMo: Write A Poem A Day for National Poetry Month
It's my favorite month for so many reasons. Spring. My birthday. National Poetry Month. Last year was grueling writing a poem a day, but I've committed to trying again. I think I missed a couple days last April when I fell in love. Still in love. Still writing.
Directions Home
Start wherever you are.
Take the interstate
East or west
Underneath the vetted sky.
When you feel lost
In broken brush
You’re almost there,
Approaching arches,
Our exit,
An orange afterthought.
If the bridge is gone,
Fly the gap.
Pass the red headed girl.
Gas up at the dying diner
Where locals look
You up and down
And frown you
A new spine,
Chewing burgers
Named for fat coaches.
Hold their gaze.
The road will curve
Toward Illinois.
Don’t worry.
Soon you’ll part
Fields that months ago
Were seas,
Notice dried vegetal debris
Caught on barbed wire, pointing
The way water flows
Parallel to V.
Over the bridge, try to blur.
Read a message
In lights from Jesus
At the Wider Bible Church
Who mentioned just before
The flood
Something about thirst.
Notice roads
Run out of alphabet. Start
Panning for the edge
Of earth. Don’t turn
At the equal armed cross.
Now is not the time
To be caught
By country song or sketchy call.
You’ll miss it.
The first house
After double awe.
Everything around it leans,
Collects tumbleweeds.
If the time is right,
Your dust might make
A heifer sneeze or believe
In ghosts,
Forget to blink.
Watch her watch you
Walking to our door.
Notice the strange way
She makes you
Breathe.
2014