poems by rachel kellum
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Elegy for Geoffrey Greg Brown, a Fine Hen
When the first chicken you ever loved
Dies of unknown causes
While you are out of town,
And your practical partner
Tells you he has tossed her
In the dumpster, do not judge him.
Pull her out when you return,
When time permits a burial.
Examine her brown plumage,
Recollect the story of her mystery,
How she joined this flock
From who knows where.
Marvel at the joy of unknown origin,
Clandestine breeds.
Remember how she squatted,
Stomped her feet for you
To stroke her velvet back?
Imagine a year of her brown eggs
Bloomed now in your musculature.
Notice in her current limpness
She was more than body—
Clever, friendly, generous bird
Full of electricity and hope.
How she would chase you
Carrying the compost bowl!
Remember her gentle beak
Stealing seed from your palm,
The way you wished the others
Would learn her etiquette?
She is lighter, smaller now.
Her head lolls side to side
On the walk to the shed,
Her eyes two shriveled sockets.
Where is the animal you loved?
You dig where water has run off
The roof of an old outbuilding
And made the ground soft.
Your shovel finds its way with ease.
Sing simple syllables over her,
Curb the urge to wish
Her constant ghostly presence.
Even chickens must move on.
Spread her perfect wing.
Try to take her feathers
With bare fingers.
When that fails, find scissors
In the kitchen.
Pluck two from the neck,
Cut two from the left wing
To share with your youngest son,
Who, like you, knows the power
Of a good name and called her Geoffrey
After you named her Greg Brown.
She never knew her names,
But Brown and Neruda
Were wrong about chickens.
Sit her up in her new nest.
Gather brown upon brown.
Set a log on end.
Promise to carve her name.
2015
with love and thanks to singer/songwriter,
Greg Brown, for the story after this song.
Wont to Do
On this night
of our second anniversary,
Venus burns her lamp
remarkably bright.
How odd, I thought,
pocketing my own small
flashlight. I couldn’t help
but guess she and Mars
were arm in arm
on their walk through
the pasture, too,
but they are not
as close as we.
He went down and she
shone all alone,
mopping up the aftermath
as love is wont to do.
2015
To Gravity
At last up the sled hill
With boys who both
Outweigh me now,
We give ourselves
To gravity like children
And snow.
2015
Leadville, CO
She asked for it
Give me a good one liner
And I just may let you live.
I’m already dead.
Nice try.
That’s not my one liner.
Mmhm.
Go ahead, I can’t be killed.
Point blank.
I don’t tremble.
Sunflowers sprout from my eyes.
My arms become a flock of snow geese.
My body, the prairie sky.
My legs, a washboard road.
She walks it, lost.
2015
…his snore to keep
Morning in my arms
when he gives
himself utterly
to the unselfconscious
proboscis of sleep,
and breath catches
deep in the center
of his innocence,
contentment makes
of me the lord
of a shoreless sea.
2015
In the Graveyard of my Body
In the graveyard of my body,
I bury the bean of my sister.
Sometimes she’s a cherry.
Peach pit. Cilantro seed.
She branches new from
Vine or trunk or stem
Bearing white petals
Around a black eye
Or lemon fruit or
Giant butter beans
I stew with ham
In which I dip corn bread
To stuff my mouth
With my favorite love song
Sopping wet and simple.
Other times she is mica,
Flecked stone full of mirrors,
The bone carved owl
In her Illinois grave,
A house sparrow egg
Thrown from the nest.
Fools gold pours
From my heart while I sleep.
A dark duo of whos
Measure the distance.
See the drab bird alone, flitting?
Watch her build a nest up high.
Some feathered thing disappears
Into cirrus like a bean stalk
I’m not afraid to climb.
2015
The Carousel of Happiness
Today a llama in ballet slippers
Drives you to your children’s lost childhood.
Round and round and up and down
On that which can never be regained:
A brass axis you hold with both hands.
Strangely happy, someone else’s joy
Moves through your chest and chokes you.
You never asked for a perfect childhood.
The Vietnam vet who lovingly carved the animals
Of your life did not know you. Still, he knows you.
Nostalgia makes you stare at the ceiling,
Notice fairies on window sills, pretend fascination
At the simple machine of the thing in order
Not to cry. Pretending makes the fascination real,
Circling what never was and cannot be.
Soon you are stuck half in and out of a wall
Called Somewhere Else. You try another animal.
Another. Another. The rooster in pearls is silent.
The frog holding a rubber ball never throws it.
The pink pig doesn’t oink as you oink
At the little girl on the cat who insisted
We each choose the animal we want,
Not the animals closest to each other.
Proximity is not the highest goal in family life.
She knows. We can always wave and smile
Across the hub and spokes of hardwood timbers,
Probably once a private wood protected
By a sign that read No Trespassing.
Now it only costs a dollar to waltz
With the Wurlitzer military band organ,
Circling someone else’s Americana dream
That now is yours, two childhoods late.
2015
Nederland, CO