poems by rachel kellum
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Minefields
The moment when a feeling enters the body/
is political. This touch is political/* said Rich
the year I was born a girl. The minefields
of my husband’s black body, mine,
my sons’ white bodies, mine, proliferate.
Text fields. Silent white woman mother wife
poet, keep quiet. (Not) your stories to write. Mine.
My body ignores their borders, knows what lies
beneath a temple, gun, knee, has hung from trees.
Keep them all alive, three hearts beat/en outside
my body, mine, blood I built and build with touch.
I turn down, muffle public words. Cannot speak
for the men I serve, lives, minds (not) mine. Mine.
I tiptoe, tremble, touch their skin, wrap arms
around them in the dark, in the kitchen.**
* from Adrienne Rich, “The Blue Ghazals,” in The Will to Change, 1971
** “To protect a loved one, you should wrap yourself around their head and shoulders with your back to the device. You then become a shield against the shrapnel.” from Attacks of Terror: Surviving the Unthinkable, by J. Brett Earnest, 2003
Recovering Art Goodtimes
We all carry the echo.
Baritone poem shouts us alert
in thunder throat rolls,
spark-eyes peeking from electric hair,
takes flight in upraised arms,
hugs us off our feet, wild grandpa,
Grand Shroompa
squatting, mushroom
springing up red magic overnight,
wisdom spores on the wind,
wind of Art’s word,
huge and silent now, healing close
to the brown earth,
our hearts the archeology
of duff seeded with him, beating,
waiting, praying, needles parting,
his new voice to rise
at any volume, even the page,
the page is loud, very loud,
we hear it, we hear him in it,
we hear him.
What is Essential
Saint-Exupéry might say we share a small planet, love.
He might say I am the petty, pretty rose, you the little prince.
It is a tidy metaphor for love, but, these days, limited.
Watch. On alternating days, one of us is the rose,
feigning uniqueness and fragility, or the little prince,
wanting to love tenderly, attentively, or fly off, equally.
Baobabs are not so easy to parse metaphorically.
We can weed and weed our faults while shoots are small,
but shoots keep coming, impersonating roses,
seducing us with fascinating problems, fine drama, inner
entertainment. Something to do. Their easy seeds blow in
from childhood, neighboring planets, grow while we sleep.
We’ve all fallen in love with the drawing of three baobabs
splitting the little planet in their rooted fists. Antoine admits
his intricate care with this drawing is an urgent warning.
But if we are both the rose and the little prince, let us
also each be the planet and the baobab. Let the planet be
our sturdy sense of self, perceived core, sweetest clinging.
Let the muscled baobabs be our demons, dream-crushing
fears, insecurity, illusion of separateness, alienation—
breaking our hearts beyond solidity: self-grasping crumbs!
Can you love me, darling, crushed this way, in the grip
of the baobab? Can I love you, a pile of pulverized rubble?
Long live the baobab for doing what it does: wrecking us!
If we are the rose, the prince, baobabs, and planetary dust,
let us also be the endless space holding every broken, starry
adventure of us. May we enfold each other that way, my love.
¡EL BIRCH!
Scratched into the campground bathroom
wall, these two unlikely words, ¡EL BIRCH!
complete with inverted exclamation point.
In the stench, I conjure a grandmother sitting there,
holding her breath, noting the swear, thinking,
“No, that won’t do,” so planned a quick return
with a nail file from her purse, to carefully turn
the curse of the T into a tailed R, shout-out to a
white tree that doesn’t grow naturally in these parts.
Memorial Weekend
North Crestone Creek Campground
Backyard Chöd
I am a suet seed cake pressed
into the shape of a woman.
Pop me out of my package.
Encage me in a green basket.
Hang me from that piñon limb.
Watch the Western Tanager,
tiny feathered sunset, delicately
eat my head, steal my eyes.
Two Black Headed Grosbeaks
vie to nibble off my arms.
Their brown striped wives spar
to take turns with my neck,
leaving shoulders for the muted,
butter mate of Tanager.
Everyone flees when Magpie,
huge with white, black and blue
plumes, swoops to gobble up
my seedy breasts. My heart!
The limb sags. The basket slips.
Hidden behind bedroom glass,
you knock on the window
to scare him off, leave some
for the Mountain Blue Bird,
sky too timid, too diminutive to spar,
watching from the bird bath
dreaming of my knees, my toes,
but he is too slow. Grosbeaks
get to them first. Tanagers
return like a gang of seven
red setting suns, crumble up
my guts in rounds, dropping
crumbs for the chubby-cheeked
ground squirrel and nervous
chipmunk, both planning wings
for their next life. When all that
is left of me is grease on a green
basket, the sun licks that off
like batter from birthday cake
beaters. Now I flicker and blink
in the eyes of a dozen backyard
birds, the tiny hearts of squirrels,
in the slant light of day reaching
over the San Juans, every ray
waving goodbye, goodbye.
This poem is inspired by the ancient Bön Practice of Chöd, as seen performed here by my friend Geshe Tenzin Yangton, the purpose of which is to cut through attachment to one's body by ritually offering it to all sentient beings. (Turn on subtitles for the English translation). Alejandro Chaoul Reich provides a detailed explanation of it in his book, Chöd Practice in the Bon Tradition.
Unconditional
A broken lower incisor
abscess made him thin.
Stress stole her eyelid,
ear and cleavage skin.
Toothless and Scabby
lisping and peeling,
Gaptooth and Seczema
loving and ringing the 50s in.
My Mother’s Geraniums
It is safe to write about red geraniums,
their sharp, earthy aroma, and imagine them,
once summer and hummingbirds have passed,
dragged in off the porch, blooming indoors
all winter like my mother’s prayers, so red,
such bright fistfuls of love for her wounded ones,
it is hard not to think of blood, her blood pumping
through all of us, if it could, if she could will it.
in honor of my mother, a week late