poems by rachel kellum
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The Kind Doctor
A stream of young doctors come to talk
to us while my mother’s diabetic husband
begs for Pepsi, parched and fidgety on the bed.
They are trying to get to the bottom of his weakness,
slurring, drooping right lip, which come and go.
Despite my whispered hallway insistence
to emergency room nurses about my mother’s mind,
one doctor is rude, repeating. Most are kind.
The kindest one, the only Black man in the room,
observed by a serious, clipped attending,
exclaims Good Lord with informal flair when
he takes a seat and drops his pen, fishes it from his shoes,
admits, We are only human, we doctors, awkward, too
to put her at ease. He listens patiently
to the way she answers his direct questions
with long, innocent narrations that soften the truth
about her husband’s diet, protect her pride, stop clock time
with her vanity, her humanity. He gently interjects
Yes, ma’am, so kindly, as she repeats declarations of love
and admiration for Al, Allen, such a good, kind, intelligent man,
who was a school principal, who called her at midnight
all those years ago, her sweetheart, and when she is done,
the kind doctor repeats his diagnosis three different times,
in three different ways with careful explanations,
as if each one were the first, to her surprised, Oh!
No doctor has ever taken the time to explain that before.
And when my mother, crowned queen of long-term memory,
tells him she has always had a special sense, she can sense
when people are good, and he is truly good, she can tell
by how he really listens, and she’s grateful for him,
he says he is grateful she has trusted him with her husband’s care.
She says again, Some people just have a sense about people,
and he says, I believe that, too, and have thought a lot about it,
and stands, takes her hand, says he will come back
to talk with her about this very thing. Soon. We are all moved.
Al is moved to intensive care. The kind doctor doesn’t return.
My mother doesn’t remember him, her whisperer.
Walking the Burn is Born
Click the image below to order your copy! Thank you to all who made this day possible.
When I was Afraid to Publish It
I was alone in the car
resting in that silent hour it takes
to drive south
to buy chicken feed, broccoli and milk
when a girlfriend’s text
told me to listen to him and I did
grateful for apps and phones I normally hate
for their hold on my throat, but when
I heard Padraig’s voice, that tenderness
that willingness to linger over others’
profound minutiae, to savor sorrow
the glowing char of it, I grew the spine
to slip off my skin for this book
peel back muscles and nerves, say
look at these boney words
and I just knew Padraig would
have the guts, the heart to look, to say
what strong bones you have
and I wept there, alone
with Padraig, himself disembodied
zipping me back up like a father
a good friend sending me
into the rough world, book in hand
spine open, reaching for you
with immense gratitude to Pádraig Ó Tuama,
poet and host of Poetry Unbound
School Bus Geopolitics
A flying-white-silk-haired ten-year-old
announces to his class on the bus
that Germany has predicted WWIII
will break out this year. Nah,
a few friends reply, Nuh-uh.
Germany knows, Germany knows!
he insists. One of two adults on the bus,
I don’t know, haven’t read it.
Another boy looks to me, a question
in his eyes. I lean across the aisle,
I read a lot of trustworthy news,
I say, I haven’t seen this report.
He shifts in his seat, shifts his eyes,
repeats words that sound like something
he overheard his parents say
about our oligarch’s plans
to swipe up Greenland, rename the Gulf.
What an idiot, he says, What an idiot.
Effigy
Limestone
In the shape of a woman
Chiseled by economic necessity
Into a teacher
Where once was an easy smile
Cheerful eyes
Rain has chewed away three caves
Pitied, pitted
Pinpoints of sand
The eyes of children
Change in a blink
From liquid to fine grit
Lifted by wind gusting
Around her
Curated room
April 2024
hermitage of the furred ones
the dog and cat
live like a monk and nun
share a low bed
warmth, silence
crawling light
companionable love
Dear Danny,
I forgot I bought him the book
First thing today, Grey texted six photos
of Jack’s “What Can I Say”
A destiny read, he said
Cage’s chance operations
Grey’s fingers on the edge
of morning pages, Amor Fati’s long spine
pried wide, at first I thought
his fingernails were mine
Remember him?
Jack too large for the tiny screen
I grabbed my own worn copy
scanned the contents, page 66, read it
to Dorell steeping coffee in the kitchen
Jack Fest program tucked in
Seven years ago, the night
you met Grey, just 18, at Lithic you said
How are you or something and he said
Tired, life is long and you said
in your slow, crooked-smile drawl
We can only hope and he shrugged
the smallest shrug. Later that night
he hung briefly off his belt from rafters
in Wendy’s garage, pulled up
against gravity
with hard wiry arms. I wondered
why he wore his black hoody up
the next warm day, stacking a precarious cairn
on the edge of Trickster Ridge, a signpost to life:
Go any direction from here
By miracle, Jack still holds Grey’s hand
in Leadville, sits here with me, in me
watching emptiness, like Wallace,
push snow off pinyon branches
What can we say
Because No Poem will be Read at Trump’s Second Inauguration, Here is Mine
Convinced by scientific TikTok evidence, my sons
believe the earth won’t sustain them as old men
Undeterred, one surfs wild rivers and steep snow slopes
Dante’s new Virgil, smiling guide to final earthly joys
The other builds gorgeous archaeologies of sound
ephemeral festival cities for the hopeful, the lost
My daughter fights fires, serves those bent by poverty
pours love into her infant, sparkling boy
My husband builds houses for Buddhist lamas, for peace
for the comfortable rich who cannot sleep
I teach children how to nurture worms, sprouts, compost
make murals for their greenhouse, useful clay cups
Hear this, you broken, misled, profit-blinded, king-minded hoard-men
We will not stop, we will never give up
Your four-year swansong will come to its natural end
I Pull Away from Screens like a Junkie, Reluctantly—
to wash the dog in October
tied to the sunny porch, drying out
barking as I go about filling buckets
to haul ten gallons of water
to five bickering chickens where I see
Brownie’s plucked feathers grew back
to yank blossom-end-rot tomatoes
off dwindling patio plants
before the others go bad too
to notice rusty hummers have moved on
and my troubled neighbor
must be drinking again by the sound of it
and my ear is still an echo chamber
hissing like a seashell I carry everywhere
an improvement over the usual sound
of distant heavy machinery in my head
as if men were shifting gears in me, moving dirt,
tearing up trees, pouring a concrete path through a forest
abandoning failed broken slabs
and bottles of yellow piss
on the shoulder of my wilderness
—the most anti-consumerist, purposeless
I’ve been in months, sitting here, scribbling this
watching the dog grow glossy