poems by rachel kellum
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Mirror, Mirror
I don’t know what frames me
Or how I lean.
I can’t see myself.
When you look at me,
you see only you.
If you want the truth,
look at me.
Can you say what force contains me?
I will tell you what I see.
You in the room wearing red,
White scarf, blue jeans, black vest.
You have a body this week.
You are pacing.
Glancing at air with friends.
No more. No less.
I don’t know what you are writing.
Whatever it is,
It is not about me.
2014
A Mile in Me
Skin of duality.
Empty dream of feet.
Pour your pair into me.
We’ll amble shores
Where bare soles tremble.
Black stone beach.
Cactus bloom gorge.
Waterproof vault
In a wet cemetery.
2014
Her Death
There was no lightning to announce
Her death, though her eyes shot wide
And clear into a sun we couldn’t see.
Freed from sight, she did not squint.
In unison our heads fell back, wailing
Like Picasso’s horse, having just lost
The quiet war. There was no exit sign
In the upper corner of the room.
Her name never flashed in lights
To celebrate the way she moved like water
Wheeling her IV, saint in a loosely tied sheet,
Old child playing a bare-assed ghost.
When she floated away, her body
A cold stone, we too were stones
Swallowed by a lost river
Rubbing us small and smooth.
2014
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