poems by rachel kellum
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The Great Perfection
walking the bardo
between perfect shots and screens
don’t plan your next post
The Sea Who Named Itself
You should use the pronoun “that” when you’re referring to an object
or a living creature without a name, which leaves the pronoun “who”
for when you’re referencing a person or living thing that is named.
~Candace Osmond, the Grammarist
Lushootseed comes from two words, one meaning "salt water"
and the other meaning "language," and refers to the common
language, made up of many local dialects, that was spoken
throughout the region. ~Coll-Peter Thrush, historian, University of Washington
Is spoken. Is.
The Salish name of Puget Sound
is Whulj: the sea we know,
our salt water. Home.
Wade in up to your chin.
Listen.
The shore, incessant, whispers it:
whulj, whulj, whulj, whulj
Even seals know it,
spoke Lushootseed
long before a white man sailed,
picking names like nits
from his powdered wig
to plot a sea
who never needed him.
Sugar to Water
He mixes
nectar
like a bartender
hoping for a big tip
1 to 1
a dozen birds
swarm four holes
vie and zip
tiny addicts
Red
Already overstocked with jam
from last July, we netted the cherry tree
to buy time, deepen its red before harvest,
black plastic threads a woven protection
from wild birds and fat ground squirrels.
Last night I found one of the latter tangled
and stiff in the net—likely killed
by the day’s heat or my curious dog
obsessed with chasing small things—
having failed to safely enter the hole I cut
last week to save a robin who hung
upside down all day, feathered Odin,
one leg extended and stiff, wild eyed,
red breast heaving with fight
and free wings. She clamped
her sharp beak on shaking fingers
and mosquito net sleeves as we toiled,
my thighs and back side already itching
with the onslaught of dusk’s usual pestilence,
for which I took no time to spray,
having just showered off the day’s oils,
on my way to address this tragedy.
You crouched there with me, aiming
the light, twitching, smacking ankles,
eventually admitting I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t
and retreated indoors. Desperate, bunching up
a fist of brand-new net above the bird,
I hacked a hole decisively, exposed
a breach, next week’s gaping, deadly door,
and brought the feathered thing inside.
I cradled her in a red kitchen towel.
You tenderly snipped with shears
fine black threads from the stiff leg,
her claw pointed like God’s finger
away from us, hunched and wincing
against futility, hoping this Hail Mary
was not too late, that blood might circulate,
reanimate the leg. When I released her
at the edge of the drive, she flew low into
the nearby lot of yucca, cactus, piñon, night.
Aloud, I worried she would die. You assured
me there are plenty of birds with bad legs
who survive, though you couldn’t name
one. I did not argue, knowing then you
love me enough to soothe me with half-truths,
hold me, later, in bed, sweating where we
touch, ignore the pulse of fresh, red bites.
Dead Man’s Float
I’m writing a poem because it’s useless.
No money to be made, no publishers to court.
No student cruelty or apathy to stew.
A consequence of Jim Harrison calling to me
from a shelf of Crestone’s free-box.
That’s how it happens. Drive-by book-nappings.
I’m assuming the posture, as his title instructs,
on this first day home from the classroom.
Only two months to heal, put out new shoots
from withered roots. Broke, we begged for a lake.
They gave us a blue plastic kiddie pool.
Here’s my best dead man’s float.
Jim’s black letters serve as seeds. I scrawl
in a book Laurie collaged, faux antiqued pages,
her brush dipped in brown ink and dragged
across scalloped edges, spine bound with string.
My writing is how she reads me, dead as she is,
how she speaks to me, filters through Jim,
fellow Montanan. Huskily, surly, smoke curled.
Sit on the couch, Rachel. Read him, she says.
Float with me. Watch clouds roll in like motherships
over that flat peak, come for you like rain, winter,
instructions for Liberation in the Great Between
whispered in your ear. Notice the warble
of chickens through your walls, the rise and fall
of your dog’s chest. Sip coffee. Uninstall media.
And, for chrissake, stop thinking about teaching.
Rebeccanrachel
From time to time someone will learn my name
at a conference or wedding, shake my hand,
and later, in passing, call me that other famous
Old Testament name, warmly embedded
in a sentence: Rebecca, how long have you taught art?
or, What is your connection to the bride, Rebecca?
I’ll smile, say, It’s Rachel, but it’s ok, and they’ll apologize
until I explain I love to be called my little sister’s name
and often was, as a girl, by work weary parents,
sounding off the litany of four to seven children’s names
depending on which home we were visiting
or living in, until the right one landed on the ears
of the wayward, beloved one. Yes, I say, it’s ok
to call me by her name. I love to hear the song
of it in the air, to remember the years when we were
Rachelnrebecca, to wear it for her, hear it in the flesh
we share as sisters, as if being composed
of mostly the same stuff were enough to live her,
give her an aging body, hard-won love,
the joy and grief of bearing, raising, sparing children
our inheritance, as if by surrogacy, by baptismal proxy,
rising every morning from the water of my bed.
The Great Feast
On the alpine edge of a once inland sea
dried up for five hundred millennia,
humans prayed to personified gods
for a late frost or lucky fluke
to stem the impending pestilence.
Located by countless echoes
of winter hunger and March longing,
the God of Bats vibrated with love
and spite, spread both dark wings,
unleashed the great feast.
A cloud of blessing ascends from low
shadows. Drop your shovel. Hear it ring.
Run, flail, gnash teeth. Slap the sting.
From afar, witness your garden grow
and bats dive behind a whining screen.
Reading Vows
I read the RV bed,
the valley
in the mattress
formed by years
of Carla and Julie
rolling to center, sinking
in each other’s arms
anywhere between here
and Michigan.
Sleeping there with Dorell,
house guests,
the night before
their renewal of vows,
we fall into that nest,
make it warm
with our witness.
By morning, thick
with shared heat,
I climb the hill
of the bed’s high edge,
kick off the quilt
to the cool blue sheet,
fall into dreams again.
The tension of clinging
to the ridge, a giant
snoring woman fallen
to earth, my arm an anchor
thrown over a cliff,
is too much work.
I let go, roll down,
his heft a word
my body knows by heart,
our sunken shape
a new memory
in that soft valley
where every shared night
is a vow.
High Desert Love Languages
Piñon want to be in every poem,
reach into all the cracks the weather makes.
To lengthen in any direction we must break
something, we must suck the water
from dry places, like the bee, like the billionaire,
like me, fighting for a viable teaching salary
so I can retire, scoffing at aphorisms
of well-fed western gurus who say
poverty and wealth are states of mind.
I say, states of body passed on in human seed:
working class exhaustion, the learned
love language of poverty—craving
only things that are free. Only three
out of thirty students in this desert valley
raised their hands when asked if they feel
most loved when they receive gifts.
Gifts—reciprocation—make us uneasy.
Praise, another gift, empty in this empty place.
Give me touch. Give me time.
Give me a sink full of clean dishes.
I took the survey and laughed:
how many receptors I have grown,
tiny pores of hands for almost any kind
of love. I only joke that I am needy.