poems by rachel kellum
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How Often Do You Check on a Sleeping Baby?
Weeks, I woke
in the dark attic room
held my breath
or shuffled blind
hands before me
searching corners
navigating the wake
of a sharp-sloped roof
to his bedside
to listen to him breathe—
my boy on the cusp
of the loaded void
or seventeen.
The Rise of Sugar
As a child of Illinois
Raised on black pepper,
Unaccustomed to the habaneros
Of adulthood, having not yet
Laughed through tears
With a coughing lover laboring
Over the cast iron pan,
I would pour them in—
Red Hots—to see how long
I could savor the burn
Before spitting them out
Like bloody teeth into my hand,
Before fire gave way
To the rise of sugar.
2016
The Worst
I should forgive you, who perhaps foresaw the worst that I might do, and forgave before I could act
From “To My Mother,” Wendell Berry
The pistol in the dark closet
The bullets in the drawer
Married in your hands,
Identical to mine but for size,
The taut skin of your youth
And my midlife crevasses.
Already, I have forgiven you,
Forgiven my own imagining
Of your pacing through rooms,
The cold steel of your father’s .357,
The dog watching, helpless
While you practiced right angles,
Pressing death against your temple,
Palette, thrusted chin. I have forgiven
The worst you could do before
You did not do it, could not do it.
Even crumbling under the weight
Of morning, your hands,
Built by my blood, reached for a phone
And called two men to come.
Forgive me. The day you were born,
I had already forgiven your reluctant relief
Handing over the gun.
The Carpenter
For Lahne
You did not give me life,
But, in choosing her and four of us,
Showed me how love lives
Inside a man when he enfolds
A small girl’s mother in the pause
Of making dinner in a kitchen,
Or calls her My Bride,
A smile in the way he says
Her names, first and middle,
Rocking her to the quiet song
Of the pressure cooker’s
Clicking weight spurting steam.
When we ate, my mother
Served you first.
When she laid down the law,
Your posture—voice calm and firm—
Made us honor her.
A grown woman now, I know:
You did not have to.
You did not have to teach me
How to tie a knot with seven twists,
Hold down fins with a tight grip
To gently pull a hook,
Nor gut, nor skillfully filet a fish.
You did not have to cut a door
For my dog into the shed you built
Nor give her straw for a bed
Nor build a cable run.
You did not have to lend me tools
To make an elephant of a dowel
Nor bet it was impossible
Nor grin and give me a dollar
When I proved you wrong.
You did not have to sing to me
Of pretty bubbles in your pick-up
Nor teach me the joy of ridiculous riddles
Whose answers’ only sense is to laugh.
You did not have to take us—
Take us to the lake to water ski,
Nor thrill us with the roaring outboard,
Sink the stern with speed
To lift us, perched upon the bow,
Children skyward thrown.
You did not have to teach me
Water’s words: port and starboard.
You did not have to wake first
After a night of steady rain
To make us bacon, mush and eggs
While we slept in sagging tents.
You did not have to cry
When my sisters and I sang hymns
Nor hold my hand with your rough one—
Fragrant with Corn Husker’s lotion,
Watching sitcoms on the couch.
You did not have to.
You could not have known
Thirty years later I would see
A carpenter’s pencil—sharpened,
Like yours, into facets with a knife,
Resting flat on my love’s handmade cabinet,
Waiting for his pocket, its lead scent
Praying for the wooden day to begin—
And a deep joy would rise in me
Remembering my true father,
The carpenter who built
A home in me for this.
2016
Matterless
She was always shifting matter
around herself for maximum happiness.
If enough fat melted off her face
without stealing from her breasts,
if her children would visit long enough
for a day to feel mundane, to the point
that made her long to write
instead of watch their painful shows,
if she could move enough compost,
plant seeds, avoid the biting gnats of June,
she could dial in. She knew the channel
would always slip. Still she tried.
When her hearing started to go and then
her eyes, and no amount of prednisone,
yawning, blinking lids or layers of lenses
brought full sound or focus,
her inner focus sharpened first on anger’s grit,
then the leather of impermanence.
Her body quit to show her where she lived.
No amount of training in that space
prepared her for her not/happiness.
She chased and then refused the place.
2016
After the Blizzard,
she said, Let’s go outside.
The hen house was warm enough.
Their water was water, not ice.
She gathered eight eggs in her hands,
steadied them against her breast.
To spare the kitchen floor her boots,
she perched the pretty eggs upon his pants
crumpled on the mudroom bench.
She stepped again into the chill,
scanned the yard. He called.
Crunching through the driveway snow
she saw him at the mouth of the garage
behind the guest house—red, the one
he built from an ancient shed
and named, to her delight, The Cottage.
He smelled of smoke.
He smiled and spoke of plans for walls.
Do you smell smoke? he asked.
She laughed, Why hide it?
and mostly meant it. He laughed too.
I’m going to check the chicks,
she said, and stepped into his footprints
to the cottage where a heat lamp
was their winter sun for weeks.
Snow filled the doorway.
She kicked it free, pushed in.
The house exhaled a cloud.
The black tub smoked and glowed.
She didn’t want to look, but did.
The rush of air had set a fire free.
Pressed against the tub’s black wall,
five chicks were hunched together
inches from the little fire rising
from a blackened disc of pine chips
reaching up to crack the sagging lamp.
She pulled the lamp, dropped the tub
upon a drift and quickly snuffed the fire.
Chicks pecked at their tiny mound of snow.
The house stood red. The man looked on.
I thought I smelled smoke, he said.
Neither let the other take the blame.
What could have been was not.
The weightless joy of unearned luck
followed them like hungry chicks,
like fire’s love of oxygen, all day to bed.
2016
Cartography
No longer a stop
On her father’s route,
A woman reads
His 19th century maps.
They cannot lead
Her home or past him.
2015
Blue Daughters
There are blue daughters
my daughter cannot save.
Hanging from hand knit scarf
and pink bunk bed,
Found by little sister
after Pokemon and macaroni;
Or carried in on Saturday
by a running father
Damning Monday when
his daughter’s flu turns
Hot pneumonia,
limping sepsis. Pulseless.
Fast, I see her humming
over small bodies,
Measuring every nuance:
pupil, grimace, shade
Of skin, curl of leg.
At once a warm machine
Pumping, hands I have held
become small hearts.
Her voice hopeful, urging
sweeties, honeys, kiddos
To breathe, open eyes,
cry in confusion
At the sterile room,
the crowded bedroom
Full of stuffed bears,
Barbies, strangers,
Parents in the corner
of the nightmare.
When thirty minutes pass,
drops form
On her upper lip,
inside her dark blue shirt.
She cycles in and out
with her best friends
Who’ve learned
to massage death in turns,
With cheers and sighs
for fragile victories,
Knowing eyes for the dark
unmooring dawning.
Hours of engine hands
and pulsing drugs,
Electric volts of science,
love,
And existential prayer
may be not enough.
Personnel wipe
their lowered faces, pause;
Stiffly leave the room
where plastic tubes,
Blood-stained gauze,
tiny clothes litter the floor.
My daughter, ever tidy as a girl,
knows the simple
Magic of mundane order:
cleans the mess,
Lifts the child from floor
to lower bunk, arranges
Silken hair around a bruised neck,
brushes wisps
From the blue girl’s
precious forehead.
The crush-faced mother
crawls in bed
With her still daughter,
and my daughter goes, must
Go. Tall. Departs the room,
the house, the hospital.
Calls me, bright voice cracking,
on the drive home.
2015