poems by rachel kellum
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Fine Arts Phenomena
The fountain of water is of the Corinthian order.
Fluted drums become acanthus curls,
Like men’s pant legs.
The frieze across our chests is full
of muscular gods facing the ancient harp.
We know the song has changed.
Columns pretend to be trees, whole
forests fluted with bark, crowned with real leaves.
Columns of cloud feed woods and fountains rain.
The stone dome over your bone dome
is no greater or lesser a feat. Face it.
Clouds and arms are the same. A colonnade.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015
Sunflowers
A horse head blooms yellow petals
over four legs not its own in sweats
and white sneakers, a tourist.
Cars bloom, spin leaf wheels.
Even mountain peaks pray
for budding yellow petals
when the sun throws rays overhead.
Does everything long to be something else?
The slow nature of time spreads
out the process and lies:
you are only you. No petals allowed.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015
Golden Gates
The earth loves repetition.
Mountains are pyramids.
The Golden Gate quotes the city
On the hill, rolling up into itself
Like clouds. The bridge
Could be a prison or a barge.
Cars mimic clouds rolling to work
Dreaming of being water, blues
Under the bridge or mountains
Sprouting gentrified houses
For people in the center of the fringe.
Look how earth became steel,
How steel became a road over water,
How water would destroy the bridge
If not for painters, for golden paint
Named International Orange
Ironically the color of rust.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015
Furnace Creek Phenomena
Your face is a ceramic tiled roof.You think I don’t see water roll off you.Some days, your hands and feet hang limplyFrom the windows of your limbs.You walk over stones placed by no hands.Your car, with wheels for feet, aches for grass.2015in response to Les Barta's photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015:
Frank Synthesis
There are arches in Marin County
thanks to Frank Lloyd Wright.
Some echo parking lots, frieze
facades and Frank’s own eyes.
Meanwhile, power poles dream
stupa spires punctuated by light.
2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Frank Synthesis, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image and poor lighting)
Scotty’s Palette
Are your legs columns or turrets?
Walter Scott says both.
Do you realize Scotty’s castle
Was your own sweaty back?
Death Valley drove away
In endless cars as stories.
The ending was always the same.
Full of Scotty’s windows.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015
Frank Religion
Our bodies are crosses walking,
windows with four panes.
Perhaps our own spines
are two yellow center lines of a road,
saviors who say, Do not cross.
Others pass the opposite way.
2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Frank Religion, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image and poor lighting)
Rock Phenomena
The earth makes bricks, stacks
them with hands we call our own.
We leave openings for doors
to dark places, make windows.
Like water and wind, we eat stone.
Who can last? We carve
our names into rock domes.
Winds blow sand, water erases
letters we mistook for home.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015
Abduction
Reading white-tipped feathers, I knew more.
She was stolen just inside the henhouse door
and dragged north for eight feet before
she stopped struggling, throwing poor
wings against the sharp face of her predator.
From that point, no clues. Wide prairie evermore.
No hope for pomegranate seeds. Wrong story.
Some god did not impregnate her with future glory.
Who fed? Feral barn cat? Star eyed raccoon?
Coyote who noticed the open mouthed moon?
2015
Prescott Flowers
When your arms unfold lanceolate,
My chest spirals
Fibonacci. We die into seeds.
Will you sit in the small boat
With me and row to sea?
Mourn the bees?
Notice the world is a stem
For what we want.
You too are a stem.
Most days, our rayed heads hold
Fragile yolk,
Scheming a beak, wings.
2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015