poems by rachel kellum
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Babylonian Bazaar
The striped vegetable stalls
of the mountain street market
aren’t full of home grown vegetables
but stones men find in cave pockets
to polish and suitably sell where people
don’t bother to brush their hair
or properly corral proud nipples
before wandering the town square.
Most Saturdays I come here to pause
over tables dotted with wire-wraps
of rose quartz, bloodstone, turquoise,
the solid, nervine promises of lapis
lazuli—muse of ancient blue glaze—
but my bare throat is no Ishtar’s Gate.
2019
Elephant Cloud Gallery
Crows and honey comb,
Rothko, faceless floating man:
Paintings can’t agree.
2019
First Throw
Red mud cup on the wheel.
Your first. Slice it off with wire.
It dries. Note the bottom crack.
Damn. Change your plans.
Feed it to electric fire. Shrink.
Think coffee size, get tea.
Glaze it like an earth or sky
With your sloppiest thought.
Only for your hands. This cup.
Tiny planter? Better. Tequila.
Drink from the bottom seep.
Dream wabi sabi silver seam.
2019
Invisible Dog
When the day goes grey
my invisible dog gets antsy.
No one but me hears him bark,
frantic, while I slip on boots,
smiling at his silly grammar.
I take him off leash. He knows
the eleven-minute loop
by heart, is actually walking me.
Twitching toward coyote,
mountain lion, wild cat,
domestic dog, brown bear:
holy scat. All to the nose,
none to the lifted leg,
are sacrosanct.
He’s no ghost.
This pinyon church
in which we live,
his scented domain.
God’s favorite dog.
When we return,
I appear alone.
My husband doesn’t know
while we watch the screen,
invisible, my dog sits pretty,
watching me, hunting my eyes,
tongue panting gratitude and hope
for another go. I don’t.
2019
Self Portrait as Hydra
I slash at my own heads.
One lost, two gained.
Always budding.
Beast of Hera,
Barely visible to the naked eye.
When Sun is in Cancer,
My heads are near.
If disturbed, I contract.
Cut me into pieces: I rebuild.
Never a set number of heads.
Some say seven, some nine,
Others one hundred.
Only one is immortal. Guess.
I reproduce on my own
Unless conditions are harsh:
Winter, poor food.
I reach out for a mate.
One man’s morbid task.
They called him Hercules
But killers are weak.
The strong man lets me live, finds
My singular immortality
Loving me.
I live forever under
The right circumstances,
See without eyes,
Sting in response to light,
Align with moons:
Charon, ferryman of
Forgetfulness.
Align with Nix.
Non-zero.
My tiny eccentricity.
Larger than Pluto’s
Smallest moons,
Smaller than Styx.
Invertebrate capable of great
Contraction, still I reach
Through fresh water,
Digest what is whole,
Regenerate.
Stopped up in one place,
I burst forth in another.
2019
Happy National Poetry Month! Let Poem-a-Day practice begin!!
Here we are again, my poetry peeps! National Poetry Month is my absolute favorite month of the year, which might also be connected to the fact that April is the month of my birth. And who doesn't love spring after a long winter? So, let's start writing. I don't think I've ever actually written a poem for every day in April, but I get darn close. Here's a link to the NaPoWriMo page that gives us prompts to help us write a poem a day. Let's do this!
16 and 19
Taller than their mother, now men,
heavy- hearted heads their inheritance,
sometimes they are little boys, straddle handles
on rolling suitcases to ride them,
long legs Fred Flintstoning down the ramp
to plane entrances. Then they are
holograms: mirages of toddlers, 5- to 12-year-olds
prism-tilting out at all angles superimposed over
grown bodies like time ghosts.
2019
After the Hot Springs
Despite the time
Change, I slept,
My body its own bed
Of buried salt water.
Lithium infused, my dreams
Lounged around
My edges like fat elders,
No longer self-conscious
Of saggy arms draped
Along pool ledges,
Outstretched like a hug
Headed nowhere.
2019
False Metaphor
He fell to earth
fall equinox.
For months she too
fell, and fell, felt sorry
for the forest,
sighed apologies to trees.
The thought of her own
climbing one of its
harmless trunks
to leap into
the lowest share of sky
felt somehow like she
by benevolent neglect
betrayed the forest,
released a tight fist
of seeds too soon.
Her green pinecone.
Her own sorrow stones
passed on unwittingly,
dropped early,
too raw to root.
False metaphor.
She sees now in the sag
and hears in drips
of late winter snow,
walking through
a gentle piñon grove,
that it is the forest
who felt sorry first
for him, for her, and broke
with love to save
them both from air.