poems by rachel kellum
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The Day He Took in the Refuge Tree Thangka
“The Buddha is strong,”
declares my ten-year-old in amazement.
“He has a whole army of buddhas!”
And I take him in my arms,
my body breaking
into companies of cadence.
2012
with thanks to Samuel Rune
The Horizon is an Impossible Place to Stand
The horizon is an impossible place to stand.
If no one witnesses you, you are not there.
In this world, there must be two.
Let’s say space is the thing that shrinks
between us like a folding sheet,
four hands meeting, matching corners.
Today it happens just like that,
this folding up of distance and days.
One call, one keyed word: we touch.
It is not the touch of our mothers and fathers.
It is not a cache of scribbled love letters for scholars.
Who can study what flies the air between?
When they hear us conspire against mortality,
sculpting gods of one another in one night,
they will know. Love, too, is made of ones and zeros.
Nothing uttered is lost. Looping out
like threads, this fabric only expands.
Whose hands can reach that far?
2012
After Denver
A canyon of skyscrapers
rearranges the inner ear,
unleashes dim stars.
Looking up I fall inside.
Vertical angles bright
with your vertigo name shift
around my wide steps, daze
this prairie body’s large eye.
Evolution in low buildings
has made me smug.
I never have to make a date
with giant skies.
2012
Disembodied off I-76 behind the Comfort Inn
Riddled with plastic water bottles,
unnaturally green in shallow pockets
I refuse to consider— the shore
of the drab pond where we used to
share submarine sandwiches,
smiling, exhausted and love sore.
Cottonwood canopy shadows
rippled like the pond over sand
that also rippled like the pond
as though earth were water.
An optical illusion—solid ground
becoming fluid—I could have watched
for hours, but time was not mine today.
I stood to leave before I noticed the thing,
its brightness swallowed by those shadows.
All that was left of the crawdad
was a perfect red claw,
and it seemed that might be all
that was also left of me, walking away.
2012
You may
~after Adrienne Rich
You may be reading this poem in your white robes,
having walked the street of your mosque smiling,
still reeling after the muscled man on a motorcycle
yelled, “Go back to your own fucking country!”
You will not wear your white robes on the street again.
You may be reading this poem in a community college
classroom, texting under the table to your mother
at home smoking meth, and you are worried
she will become you before you become this poem.
You may be reading this poem on a screen
after smoothing a Romney sticker on your garage refrigerator,
dreaming of fags falling off the San Andreas fault.
You may be reading this poem next to your sleeping lover
whose breasts spread differently than yours, empty.
The book sits on your chest. Words fall and lift. She stirs.
You may be reading this poem years after leaving
your children, and you know these lines will never heal them.
You may be reading this poem instead of praying
to a wifeless god, unable to sleep, too old for a young love.
The words keep you awake, black needles stitching
us all together, we who don’t belong to each other.
2012
Bioluminescence
My son’s best friend skewered wasps
on shish kabob sticks I bought
to mark rows of seeds in my garden.
I judged his proud pronouncement,
forgetting luciferase, Illinois lightning bugs
whose glow I smeared across my night face,
joyfully certain they could live without it.
2012
Consorts
I’m jealous of monks.
It’s true.
I want to be one,
but I suppose
with breasts
and one void too many
I can be only a nun.
We all can play the skull damaru.
But I want to be with you
in the monastery
where all the teachers live,
singing songs like a baritone hive,
reading ancient texts,
bumping together our bald heads.
Forget the sewing.
In the courtyard
when we debate,
point after point
I will clap my hands
like dry lightning
until we both wake up.
Ha! Ha!
I will paint thangkas,
give buddhas your blue eyes,
but don’t make me
your peripheral, cutting dakini
unless you’ll be mine.
We could take turns being the metaphor,
the center of shrines.
A necklace of heads.
2012
Lament of the Carefully Undressed
Cotton capris slide off legs
and stand up low on the wooden floor,
two perfectly crumpled empty columns,
waiting to be stepped into like a morning
in which she wakes alone,
no clothes thrown off like sighs
in small sleeping heaps with his.
2012