poems by rachel kellum
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Wedding Owl
Exiting our wedding trail
we stood, golden, awaiting friends,
khatas draped like gentle snowy hills
over our shoulders.
Greeting us with hugs and bright eyes,
several exclaimed, “Before
the ceremony, a great horned owl
sat in this juniper near the trailhead,
swooped over us starting up the path!”
We laughed in disbelief, shook our heads.
They heard it before they saw it.
I thought, My mother’s mother. My dead sister.
Sage, my daughter, saw it too, framed
by a forked branch, perched there, who-ing.
Owl tattooed on her right foot, child on hip,
she pronounced, “The owl of our maternal line.
Grandma made it after all.” Of course.
My mother, still alive, her memory adrift,
silent night owl searching, searching
the yellow woods, her daughter’s day.
No photo as auspicious proof.
Just the word of women, our inner who.
A History of Cool
I was cherry tobacco in a pipe cool
Puffing on the coal with my girlfriend
in Crown Pub cool
I was memorized Tom Waits growl cool
I was four-inch sole black Sketcher boots cool
Thrifted 70s suede leather long coat
strapped with a waist belt cool
Lingerie camisole as a summer tank cool
I was clove cigarette then menthol cool
Half a packa Camels a week
on the steps of grad school cool
I was drop off my toddler at her dad’s
go to the literature department party cool
I was toke, sip PBR, smoke
and spin in my head on my bed till I puke cool
I was sleep with eyes open
with a street man cool
I was drum on the plaza with my posse cool
Smoke a cig with my espresso
at Paris on the Poudre
with my daughter in Guatemalan prints
on my hip cool
I was run to the window
where a longhaired musician
was knocking
to whisper you can’t stay here tonight
I’m sorry, cool
then run back to the poet in my bed cool
I was exhausted by cool
I was build a cabin in the woods cool
Fend off advances of the neighbor boogeyman cool
Buy a .38 special for protection cool
Fall in love with a poet musician
12 years my senior cool
I was toke before sex cool
I was bear two sons rarely high cool
I was stay at home mom
and pretend I’m a goddess or buddha
when sober for sex cool
I was stay with a good man for the kids cool
I was wilting inside cool
Experimentally poly cool, unfaithful cool
Divorce cool, drive the kids to and from
Two dads cool
I was Hungarian Buddhist manboy lover cool
Sleep on his friend’s floor mattress cool
I was why did I blow up my family for this cool
I was I’m my own man now cool
Power-snake roots from my own septic line cool
Pursue and screw a married poet cool
and fuck his narcissistic shit cool
I was got to get out of this redneck town cool
Fall in love with a Black man I met online cool
I was choose to love no matter what this time cool
Live on a small farm, raise pigs and chickens cool
I was let’s escape barn-sized Trump signs cool
I was let’s leap into remote mountains cool
Teach art, college English and greenhouse cool
Walk to work through the greenbelt cool
Ski with old hips and knees as long as I can cool
Now I’m five years till retirement cool
Obscene SUV payment to drive hybrid
through my golden years cool
Finally marry him by a mountain creek pool
when our ages total 108 cool
Achey hand learning the ukulele cool
Mark time by visits with grown kids
and kiss kiss kiss my grandson cool
Last Ussie
In this photo
this ussie
my face echoes
your shapes and shades
curved long chin
soft blue, bent-almond eyes
the hair, oh the hair
our brown armor
glinting copper
in the brightest light
curled long and hiding
crow’s feet
and full cheeks.
Since then, your hair
has thinned
to tufts across your skull.
You refuse to trim
long strands still flowing
down your back
tenacious trickle of pride
vestige of easy beauty
you tuck
into your wig
the one your daughter
wore in her casket
before we tugged it off
to touch the velvet
of her head one last time.
Mom, let me run
my palm
over your stubborn
wispy crown—
this new wisdom
the you of you—the way
my ears gulp stories
you repeat over and over
before they too
fall away from you.
Grease
I couldn’t recall the name
of the yellowbreasted
blackwinged
orangeheaded bird
surprisingly still lingering
in mid July
Northern… Flicker… no
wide beak…which species…
and now
Western Tanager, just now
my brain, that hunk
of flesh
brought your name back to me
like suet to an empty basket
my attention
having pecked at leftover
grease for two days
Poets and Minstrels Radio features Walking the Burn
My brilliant friend Barbara Ford is not only a gifted poet but also a poetry DJ on our local radio station, KHEN 106.9. I was honored to join her on July 10th to take turns reading poems from my new book on her show Poets and Minstrels. Enjoy, friends.
Fish Fry
Before I found her curled
like a giant muscular leaf
the old goldfish—flat orange
scales the size of fingernails
no longer a shifting glow
in the murky depth—
lay eggs in the lily pot
submerged like a watery nest
still, hovering, I feared, near death.
The huge male Shubunkin, orange and black
spotted, lay there too over the pot
and worry tested the water
chemistry, perfectly fine.
Faith in science unshaken
I went about my terrestrial days
until the morning I found their fry
funny name for a hatch
of tiny goldfish, more like mosquito larvae
or sea monkeys than fish
already flown the lily pot in open water.
I photographed them like a new grandmother.
Joy quickly rotted by next day’s discovery
their mother newly dead-eyed
stiff, already putting off a cloud
of particles, her babes
swimming there in the fog
filtering her death through tiny gills.
Next morning, already wary
of their father flicking angrily around
the pond like a prowling shark
looking for his mate, desperately alone
and hungry, they retreated to the roots
of aquatic lettuces, lacy floating foliage
of water celery drifting around
island planters, a forest in which
to hide, slowly outgrow, the size
of their father’s mouth.
because Hildegard, 20, outlived their childhood
every Tuesday morning
or every other
sifting through her
kitty litter
still my children’s mother
(never quite a cat lover)
Flying United
Scrolling United’s movie and tv offerings
Nickel Boys, Moana, Wicked, Girls will be Girls, SNL
in the middle seat, I decide against saucier options—
Jonathan Van Ness’ Fun and Slutty, their coy smile
glowing over bare shoulders and sequin gown—
because I don’t know my neighbors, don’t want
to ruffle the window woman, hard faced, possibly
MAGA. Napping. No flight fistfight today, thanks.
I go for something innocent, unthreatening—
Moana 2—which for all I know might set her off
on an inner tirade against brown people taking over
children’s media. Uniting islands. Edgy after all. Fine.
So be it. The aisle woman reaches into her bag
pulls out a colorful hardback book and a journal
covered in Frida Kahlo, child faced, hovering
over a rib cage. I know instantly I love her
this woman, who, it turns out, was once a journalist
a teacher of journalism, who is reading a book
full of essays and writing prompts compiled
by Suleika, Jon Batiste’s wife, whom I adore.
Brief teaching/writing histories shared
I sit here scribbling beside her, new sister
gift from the universe’s good graces
Dorell might attribute to my recent time on the cushion
after a year hiatus from sitting practice. As though
resting myself open, letting go of my busy story
the story starts writing love into itself, effortless.
My new friend sits beside me. We whisper, lean in
love conspirators, mourn our country’s waning humanity
cuts to the arts, attacks on journalism and anyone
not straight and white, kidnappings, denial of due process
slashing health care, climate protection and rights.
We take hope in finding each other, talking our ears off,
as men would say, sharing our work in this world:
her support of immigrant families’ needs and literacy
my teaching children how to make art and grow food—
our school greenhouse dome partner to Woody’s guitar
ironically inscribed with a pacifist’s threat:
This Machine Kills Fascists. When the window woman
finally wakes, who knows how much she has overheard.
In a cigarette-ravaged voice she says she is going
on a cruise to Alaska with friends, which somehow
confirms my worst suspicion, and explains the husband
of her friend’s son arranged the whole thing.
It would seem nothing is ever as it seems.
Looking out the window on her first Seattle descent,
she observes, “There’s so much water.” Yes, yes,
we agree. The Salish Sea. But that is another story.
for Jeanne Jones Manzer
above a storm
audiobook in my ears:
the clouds just below me
flight attendant’s voice:
the clouds below the clouds below me, draped over peaks
a kar a me mantra:
the vapor layer below that voice
my hope:
the plane’s shadow below the mantra, tiny on a blanket of clouds,
enlarging as we descend through grey mist