Surrogates

After they all left home I started

making altars of their favorite childhood books

beloved things charged with small fingers

innocent curiosity, and little gifts

they gave me: silver Ganesha pendant

wire-wrapped and naked stones

Mercury dime to replace the one

I found in the garden years ago

that one of the boys lost.

Altars because I couldn’t hold them,

daily behold them, couldn’t protect them

from wanting to die inside their minds.

Through shrines I slowly learned

to banish fear, the illusion of control

from my bones, shoulders, nerves, gut

like a Catholic with her rosary and saints

like a witch with amulets and milk spells.

I perched their weathered books,

spines draped in rinpoches’ red strings

upon the cliffs of my own bookshelf

their covers theatrical backdrops

for miniature, plasticized thangkas

of loving mother deities, placid

and sharp-toothed, wild-eyed mothers

alongside family heirlooms

from the boys’ paternal grandfather

who entrusted me with antique relics—

little clay and brass buddhas from

his tour in Thailand, my favorite

the one with a bone inside you can hear

when you shake it like a rattle, that bone

some kind of promise. It’s the kind of thing

you might laugh and shake your head

about when I’m not around, or dead

or until you have adults of your own.

You can laugh. But know: I’ve seen what praying

with too many words and worry has done

to my mother’s nerves and night dreams

as if she thinks, falling asleep on her knees

her God needs a mother, a reminding, a litany

to help him log her children’s trials, the help we need.

My style is silence and effigy. Let the altars

do their thing, like clay proxies propped

in ancient Mesopotamian temples

their robbed, disproportionately large eye sockets

empty or, incredibly, full of alabaster with black

limestone or lapis pupils, pinpoints sipping

a confounding light, Goya eyes unblinking

before the gods of tragedy, hands folded

across their chests or abdomens

in surrogate supplication while their humans

went about their little lives, too fragile to rise

from bed, to work and worry at the same time.

Reading “Walk” with Leo

In 2019, to advertise the Crestone Poetry Festival, our posse of poet planners enjoyed being recorded reading by a local videographer, Bennie, for his series Crestone Now. This one captures a reading I did with our late dog, Leo, who very much stole the show.

Scoot to 6:52 in the video to see me reading “Walk” and Leo at his best.

Here’s another reading leading up to 2019’s Poemfest, outside Bob’s Diner, which we all wish would open again soon.

“Christmas Soup” starts at the 9:20 mark. Apologies to my vegetarian friends. You’ve been warned.

Re(media)tion

Colonized by news cycles

I uninstall the Times and Instagram again

My restless mind, my hand— two grey jays

Squawking at the empty basket

Variation on a Ritual at Eight Weeks

Done with your breast, milk drunk, eyes rove

in a dream. Trust yourself to leave. Trust his father,

also asleep. Drive to the water. Undress to skin, neoprene.

You practiced for this. Walk in to your chin, your eyes,

the top of your head. Curled like a fetus, sink. Dare to open

your eyes. Black water. Listen long to the gurgling body of night.

Let the stony muck cooly cradle you, grow you hot for breath.

Inexorable, explode off the dark, barnacled fundus of the Sound.

Let the memory rise of two jumping feet inside.

Head free, inhale. Tread. Take in the sparkling surface.

Find the moon. Tread. Swim back to the edge.

From hands and knees, lift yourself to ancient feet. Stretch.

Shiver. Towel off this new creature. Drive home.

Lie down between them. Wet haired, salt-clean.

The way your salty child was clean, wearing you.

To the Large Old Man in the Button-Up Trump Shirt on the 4th of July

The posters said fireworks at 9:30, after the band.

You slipped in at dusk, to the center of the crowd—

TRUMP in full caps sans serif vertical font climbing

your right torso, front and back, huge blue stars

bedazzling your left side, where a heart beats.

What were you thinking when the night went

off-schedule and the Santana cover band, Santa Rios,

jammed on, overlapping fireworks, its sonic encore

of Latin-rock-n-roll-Afro-Cuban-jazz joy moving our feet,

churning hips, shaking out tight shoulders and necks,

opening our chests, smiling us—mostly white folks

and more, proudly groping at Spanish, “Oye cómo va /

Mi ritmo /Bueno pa’ gozar, Mulata.” Listen to how it goes,

my rhythm! Come and enjoy it, you beautiful human fusion.

But you just sat there, parked on amphitheater bench,

hands on your thighs, feet planted, spine stiff,

shoulders rigid, stoic—some kind of anti-Buddha

immune to your community dancing around you,

celebrating independence, interdependence,

honoring the gifts of Carlos Santana, brilliant

Mexican immigrant whose musical descendants

ended the evening smoothly crooning,

“You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby”

Did you notice it tap, your toe, did you feel

your simple cells—mutinous—trying to move you?

Enjoy this article on Santana adopting Puente’s “Oye Como Va.”

Also, here is another article that examines the lyrics and term, “Mulata,” in the original and evolving cultural context of this song.

The Little Humilities of Love

After they kiss goodnight, she waits for him

to turn off the light before she tapes her lips,

a stamp-sized strip to seal the sagging mouth of sleep,

quell the dead-jaw snore, the startled wake, choking.

Good night, Love, good morning.

His face thinner without teeth soaking on the sink,

he kisses her—that vulnerability reaching further

into her than any word—adhesive residue still

on morning lips he gently insists he doesn’t notice.

Poem for Eduardo

Brother Eduardo
Siddhartha sweetheart
out of this austerity
of the body
you open like an eye
a heart
clear crystal sphere
holding everywhere
everything, everyone
reflected 
inside your love
I am upside down there
loving you back
holding out my small bowl of milk
in gratitude for being
seen by you, read
your generous words
rice in the empty bowl
of my most difficult years
you wrote yourself
lettered friend
into my lonely margins
your words and my words
laced together like fingers
holding hands
old friends forever

Upcoming June Readings

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Ridgway Chautauqua presents:

Literary Living Room at The Sherbino Featuring Rachel Kellum

June 25 @ 7:30 pm

Doors: 7 || Show: 7:30 || $10

Part literary reading, part author interview, part open mic…Literary Living Room is the Sherbino’s dynamic year-round series featuring local and national literary artists of all persuasions. This June we’re excited to bring you decorated poet Rachel Kellum.

Rachel Kellum lives with her family at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains where she teaches art to valley children, writing for Adams State University, and humanities and literature courses for Trinidad State College. Additionally, she has co-organized the Crestone Poetry Festival with local poets for seven consecutive years. Rachel previously taught at Morgan Community College, where she directed the MCC CACE Gallery of Fine Art and hosted Open Mic Poetry Nights. Recognized as a Pushcart Prize nominee and NFSPS award recipient, her poetry is featured in various online platforms and printed anthologies. She conducts writing workshops, presents her poetry across Colorado, and maintains a blog at wordweeds.com. Her debut book, ah, was published by Liquid Light Press in 2012, and she anticipates the release of her next full-length collection, Walking the Burn [formerly Inheritance], from Middle Creek Publishing later this year.

Former Western Slope Poet Laureate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer notes, “With an artist’s eye, a mother’s intuition, a Sufi’s abandon and a professor’s discernment, Rachel Kellum is a rare poet. Her work is both finely crafted and emotionally risky–and she brings us with her in her willingness to explore what it means to be alive, to be in love, to hurt, to be hurt, to surrender. Some poets are better on the page. Some better in person. Rachel Kellum is better in both.”

The Sherbino

604 Clinton St
Ridgway, Colorado 81432

Confluence

The river enters my son    

becomes his hair, runs long

behind his ears, over shoulders

enters his sweat, wet raft scent of hugs

lingers on my face and arms

drifts in rooms when he departs

becomes the wisdom of his limbs

his thoughts a paddle turned a fraction

slim-edged deflection of a current that can kill

broad blade, he tunes himself against it

leans into it, slides past deep shadows

sucking underneath giant boulders

hones each edge of his heart, river muscle

a living rudder, minutely responsive

the boat only a boat but more

his joy, that brave buoyance

carries us past ancient reversals, smokers

sleepers, undercuts, widow makers

that stoic face water-cut in canyon wall

a story, a foil to his countenance

eyes sparkling, scouting the line

for Sam

Four Days Past Due

Rhododendrons burst baby pink,

lavender, fuchsia and maroon. Roses too.

Even beet-red peonies snipped short

to fit the fat jar—five cervixes on green stems—

open within hours of being arranged—

like spring—on cue. But the body is not

a simple flower turning to light. A child

is not a scent or fruit. He turns inside his mother,

not the mysterious worm in a jumping bean,

not the wet butterfly finishing his wings,

not the eye inside a closed lid, dreaming

while the muffled world calls and sings

his name to wake, hatch, bloom. He knows

no metaphors, this water being. His mother

is no tree, bush, jar, socket, pod, but a woman

surrounded by flowers, warm inside, abiding,

living in her own time, smiling silently

at the advice of mothers young and old:

try sex, mountain hikes, spicy burritos,

clary sage, birth ball bouncing, castor oil,

masturbation, nipple stimulation,

stairs, curb walks, acupressure points.

She carries on quietly, amused, not the spring

her mother imagines, not the moon on two legs,

but a woman weeding her real garden

of invasive green, pulling ferns, English ivy,

wild raspberries beneath apple trees,

her strong thighs parted, straddling a giant belly.

Scratched, resting, cooled, she spoons

peanut butter onto boats of medjool dates,

savors, swallows, softens in her own way,

embracing, with me, the first and last lesson

of motherhood: be present while you wait.

for Sage