poems by rachel kellum
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Photographs of Dogs
a day exploring the rabbit warren
twenty-five years of digital files
mined for decades from antique technology
boxy desktops, floppy disks, hard disks
laptops, CDs, thumb drives and now
this hard drive—a terabyte to hold
my life for my children and theirs when I’m gone
a ridiculous search today for the face
of the first dog of my motherhood
Mojo, border collie/black Lab mix
and the second, Leo, my son’s first love
an Aussie mix, both animals ashes now
and the third, Hank, a heeler/Kelpie mix
from Antonito, lining this empty nest with fur
a holy trinity of dogs whose faces
I will digitally carve, tongues in or out, smiling
or serious, collared or wild as dogs are
and send them to China where some underpaid
overworked mother will transfer
three canine faces to fabric, cut and sew
them into silly polyester pajamas
I will wear this winter, thinking of children
long grown who sometimes think of me
whose thousands of digital photos fold
into dogs’, reminder of the attention I gave
the beauty I saw, preserved for a day like this
when my memories have faded into presence
and every evolving pixel and video says
see that: you did it, day after day, witness
slow growth with love. Everything was always
there, the pattern expanding, dogs’ silent witness
a silken comfort to feed, three dogs who fed me
clicking down dark streets, eyes gazing into mine
on couches when the children would watch tv
or forget my existence in exhausted sleep
On the Way to Judith’s Soul Collage Workshop, or How I First Met Katherine and Nathan
I was lost.
The man and woman crouching
on the road ahead were lost.
Is this it? I asked.
It’s not here, they answered,
waving to the cluttered lot.
That is when I saw the bird
between them—
magpie plucking brown stones
from gravel,
clacking each rock loosely
in its beak like a rattle
over a cheerful warble rising
deep in the blue-black throat,
walking back and forth,
welcoming their touch.
Oh, their reborn faces!
First it landed on my head,
the woman said, now this.
What we sought—surpassed
by what we found.
The myth
flew off, a pebble in its mouth.
Drive-By Fairytales
Once upon a time after a rain, a young woman walked
the reeking sidewalk of a college town fueled by soybean industry.
A car driven by a man veered into the oily puddle in the gutter
between him and the girl and drenched her, white shirt
grey and clinging, dark curls dripping, shocked mouth a hole
hands out spread, shaking off drops from eyelashes and finger tips
like tiny prismatic knives. She walked the blocks back to her dorm,
stretching her blouse off her goose pimpled chest, wondering why.
Next week, next year, next life, riding her red bike like a mare
mane flying, another car, this one full of laughing high school boys
veered so close that one could lean out, long arm swinging
and smack her bottom planted on the small hard saddle
of her trusty ten-speed. It was then she stopped wondering.
She woke from a long sleep, as if from a spindle prick
as if from an uninvited kiss, as if from her mother’s future whisper
clawing through the earth of sixty years before the buried words
could reach her daughters’ ears. That ancient tale, gleaned
from nameless wives, scrubbed clean by brothers: her father
the king, was never more than a frog in the back seat of a car
on a first date with a lovely, naïve girl who told him no, no, no
and nine months later, muted by marriage, handed him a son—
and later, three daughters, and later, a decree of infidelity
he denied and flipped, despite his dukes’ discreet testimonies.
Later still, as the youngest daughter lay dying, golden curls
long fallen, their father, who never saw a car he didn’t covet
made a one-way flight to her side to ask if she’d bequeath
her red Ford to his youngest son, the seventh child, the favored one.
“No,” she sweetly seethed. He left before her last breath
to attend his new queen whose hardened brood love to say
none of this is true: a sullen stepchild’s sooty fairy tale.
They ride for the brand, his heirs. She tells this story anyway
her tongue a wheel of wooly thread, her finger black
with ash from a fire long dead they never had to tend.
with thanks to Amy Irish for her workshop,
“Rewriting Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends for Modern Survival”
and Maddie Crum’s “Unhappily Ever After: How Women
Post-Modern Prosperity Gospel of Our Bourgeois God
“Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” Genesis 1:26
“In a word, [the bourgeoisie] creates a world after its own image.” The Communist Manifesto
Algorithms
Work like we wish
God would
Read our minds
Our Siri whines
Conversations mic’d
Digital prayers
Into the cloud
Into the cart
Where God
Fills
Our scrolling hearts
Delivers all manner
Of goods
Services
Words of wisdom
Curated answers
Biases eternally confirmed
Self-loathing
Anything lilies of the field
Can afford
South Crestone Creek Cold Plunge
The dog fidgets and yawns
nervously as we undress at pool’s edge.
He hovers near, shrinks the circle of his wander
to the pool, that small circumference
that will swallow us to shoulders, trembling.
He who only steps into the stream with four fur feet
to lap up bites of water like a god, can’t comprehend
why we evolved to bare skin, crave cold water,
the runoff of peaks that whiten when it rains.
46 degrees, the laser thermometer reads.
We groan with the pleasure of impending suffering.
Step in, submerge fast without hesitation
as my daughter taught, our familiar breathy gasps
stripped of sex to serve survival. The mouth
of the pool pours in just beyond my lover’s shoulder.
I take in the animal of his mouth—quivering, open,
pulling air through chattering teeth and lips
stretched back in grimace, face tight, panicked
pupils, and calm myself before he does, before
we slip into an inner space that makes room
for existential threat and braces the brave body.
The dog whimpers on pool’s edge, looming protector
over shoulders, senses our mortality, eyes
darting with fear while our skin numbs and burns,
hearts slow, words reduce to syllables and skip
like silent light over the surface. For a moment
I consider my cells sloughing, our commingled cells,
riding this icy water into the great sea beneath
the desert out there, microscopic offerings to a watershed
that will feed no rivers any time soon or ever.
Along the Creek: Land Art in a Time of War
Dazzled by golden canopy,
chance upon a snake on the trail.
Gasp Oh!, jump up, then over it.
Stomp its skull
or marvel how fast it disappears
into rust red needles, leaves
in sand no undulating line behind.
Tear up the duff and grab its tail and spin
or walk into a mitigated clearing, gasp Oh!
as you behold thick bark strips of cottonwood
swirled into a human-sized cone.
Climb it, chuck chunks at birds, set it afire
or dub it chocolate kiss, onion dome,
and quickly know the artist’s hands
are just the same as winds in grasses
piling useless, boring things, let’s go
or singing waters weaving sticks for trout
to stop them in their flow, just to hear
the trout gasp Oh! and rest in shadow.
with thanks to Eric Raanan Fischman,
Allison Wonderland and Leslie Henslee
Cul-de-sac
I would let agony
have its privacy
why tell you—every night
all night, the quiet man
of the cul-de-sac
who walks to town
with a backpack
to buy his milk
eggs or liquor
cries out sharply
in wordless baritone grit
often staccato—a war
it changes the stars
flavors the giant
insomniac silence
gets into my husband’s
cracks, plants dark seeds
in words, tone
in the belly of the next day
tonight I close
the window
trap stale air
small silence, sleepless
the cries carry on
inside me, I strain
to hear him, companion
beyond the glass
slide the door
to the porch
take a blanket
to the metal love seat
antique rocker
strange comfort, his groans
all of us involuntary
voyeurs of pain
on a 45 degree night
in the window of the neighbor
between us and him
an air conditioner
begins to whir
out of nowhere
white noise
the day after rain, a walk
music rises tinnily
from my back pocket
a conch blows
a bit up the mountainside
old Buddhist
I silence my phone
to another
and another sputtered blow
then crickets
scratch of my own feet
my dog leaps through cactus
pauses to chew grass
choke it up twice
the air wet-piñon sweet
after a day of partial sun
another dog up the way
barks the glow down
beneath a distant storm