poems by rachel kellum
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Perennial
Very few perennials I planted last year
Are showing their hands yet. Late summer’s
Nursery catnip, cousin of invasive mint,
Of course is back. But then there are these:
One echinacea. One knitbone. One yarrow.
All three thriving in the weak new sun, each
Sixteen generations old that I dig up when
I move, hoping they take in new soil. Some do.
2019
Rhubarb Leaves
Rhubarb begins as red knot
A ruby marble nestled
In tightly wrinkled leaves
Leaves like ancient faces smiling
Going slack with youth over weeks
Or accordion lace collars
Sprouting heads of old British queens
Or cold green scrota slowly released
Into the heat of summer.
2019
April 1971
I found my ears’ place
upright beneath her heart,
listening, a human
question mark resisting
some man’s hands
pressing me through
muscle wall to write me
head down. Overnight
I righted myself against
my mother’s music. He
pushed me down again
toward my birth,
but for my head.
Too large to pass,
he said, unlearned,
to Mother on her back.
He cut me out, red child,
her blood in my mouth,
lifted me into a world
where he made himself
hero and I made him
thief of my origin myth.
2019
Ten Poems for Ten Days:Five Shitty Catch-Up Haiku for NaPoWriMo
I get behind. I do. I catch up with haiku. Some are better than others. See below.
Thank Queer Eye for the Recipe And Spray with Lemon
Halved, tossed with garlic
Bacon grease, salt and pepper
Brussels sprouts don’t fart.
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