poems by rachel kellum
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Ample Skin
Searching the closet filled with lycra tank tops
From younger years unplagued by rolls,
I skip them over, perhaps too old at forty-five
To try to look twenty-five or thirty-five.
Too countryfied for a yoga-style, Boulder forty-five.
I’d like not to care about thick arms
Beginning to sag and pucker, hips
That spill over jeans that fit three years ago,
But I hang on to the clothes of my youth
Like a wish, slip into loose summer dresses
I wear only about the house and yard, or jeans
And scoop-neck t-shirts if I’m going out.
My neighbor, wide ranch woman, showed up
In tight tank and shorts today, fully summer-selved.
I reveled in her free flesh, rolling ’round
On riding mower, unafraid to bounce,
Cut down what is overgrown, weed-choked,
Gone to seed, like me and this need to have
Some other body, while this me breathes
And loves the sun and wind without
Permission to bare ample skin.
2016
In the Sigh
As much as I would like
to claim the cushion as my happy place,
lately, it is rotten with tears.
My nest is in the sigh
that escapes as you touch my locus face,
that, lost, reminds me I am here.
2016
Moving Home
Perhaps my home
Is only one inch away,
A shift by which
I lay my happy self
Upon my unhappy self
Like a silk screen
Just off register,
So my edge blurs,
And my sight blurs,
And my colors breach
Their borders like marks
Of an errant child,
And the place I live
Becomes new
Because I am,
Because I have
Learned a new way
To move home.
2016
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