poems by rachel kellum
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Spin, Measure, Cut
We sit at screens in grubby kitchens
close to brooms, listen to the hum of houses.
Beets grow in the garden plot. Dill. Tomato leaves
gather heat, billow into fruit to freeze come fall.
Hens wonder where the rabbit went, the one to stalk
and peck when loose. Into weeds, up with wings?
Creatures array around us waiting for food,
New children from whom we garner radial view.
We sit—centers of domestic mandalas—
sit for words, vertigo, attachment to subside.
Sons drive off in our old minivans, eager for life
beyond us. (We once wished for this—a tiny car!)
Emancipated, wordlessness is both
a meditative victory and childless curse.
We never meant to be the kind of woman
whose children usurp her deep sea purpose.
Even forewarned, we worked like men to learn
the mother part, became her—that oar boat, Love.
I’ve lost my crew. Words do not come.
Words that do, my hands contrive and twist—
Spun like cords to tie me to the giant, rolling earth,
or spells to ravel plans for ropes’ other uses.
2016
Off Screen Isocephaly
Ruth Bavetta, Chronicle, oil on linen 48x78 1986
Everyone dressed as passersby,
we wait for the scene, our call,
ignore the orange barricades and cones,
talk of smallish things: Trump, new heat.
The sky is not full of California light
in Iowa, but still we play the polyester parts
assigned to us, squinting, calm as cameras,
relegated to realms of the unseen.
Even the cop whose heavy belt is full
of faux bravado knows: he is but an extra.
The yellow of his close-cropped hair,
his crown of golden bangs, echoes like the sun
across the moment: Charles’ sensible
button-up shirt, Leslie’s too warm
butter golf sweater, Johnny’s thinning part.
In flip flops and short shorts he watches
well-paid leads deliver middle class malaise
too perfectly. Take after take, how earnestly they
chronicle our pale, hedged lives on tiny screens.
We mutely mouth their plastic lines, practicing.
January 2016
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.