poems by rachel kellum
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To Be Crossed
A small herd
Of red cows gather
To watch me
When I walk away from
Your gentle apology.
Watching them
Watch me cry
The space between us
Is very empty
And clean.
I purely burn
The way yesterday
Morning’s heifer
Bellowed for a white bull
Across the road.
Both kicked dirt
Over their own backs,
Stamped earth,
Threw back
Huge heads.
His rusted barbs,
Her buzzing wire,
Asphalt incomprehensible
To desire,
But there, nonetheless.
2013
Throat's Shadow
Suprasternal notch—
pulsing pool of pores and light
waiting for this tongue.
2013
Constituents
The map was made of west and east.
The net was made of fish.
The step was made of stop and weep.
The meal was made of wish.
The pet was made of no and yes.
The nest was made of new.
The sap was made of me and mess.
The pew was made of you.
2013
a poem made (mostly) of words found in one game of Boggle
Commons
The space around pine needles and verbs,
Around an angry moonlit friend
Becomes a mansion.
I swear, this is no conspiracy of cheerfulness,
But I drag the bloody door of myself through
A bigger door again and again.
Burn through me, lemon, ginger.
Sing through me, blasted mosquito.
Inch through me, lover, legion.
This nameless house.
The shoreless common.
There are lockless ways in.
2013
with thanks to TWR for the phrase of the fourth line
Resorption
One does not lay burning things aside.
Like words,
One fire eats another fire, grows,
Wears a robe that cannot clothe but smoke.
Blow the sage and juniper.
Invent purity.
Throw the rice and butter,
All the lumps of sugar in at once.
Pretend we eat.
We’ll still be hungry,
Playing sated
When the coals are cold.
One wind resorbs the forest whole.
You harvest words from flaming bushes,
Feed us to the mirror world.
There you are, again, again,
In photos with black skeletons.
We eat you.
2013
Bright Bowls
My body
A fairy tale
I tell myself
In sinew
Ache
And bloody
Bones.
Your hands
The ink
Translation
I offer
Sentience
In frighteningly
Bright bowls.
2013
Without Water
“We die without water,” Rosemerry read by the river.
But I am not thinking of the fact that, indeed,
If we do not drink water, we will die.
Instead, I am remembering the water
You couldn’t swallow, that dripped off
Your cracked lips. Your cloudy, tearless eyes.
Our quiet mother holding a full glass so near your face.
2013
Curriculum Vitae
I don’t want to tell you
about my happiness,
but listen: I’ve just drunk
rain drops that fell
into my cold Earl Grey,
and the fire-cooled
propane refrigerator
and the wind-cooled
direct current inverter
have just now healed
into self-regulation
after many stop
and start days,
despite the fact
that we gave up on both
last night to kiss
slowly and sleep
when our laptop movie,
Off the Map,
whirred to fade.
Pixels and alternating
currents are easy
to trade for living lips.
Likewise, it is easy
to let wind blow,
to care less
about pages,
my curriculum vitae.
Leonard Cohen said poetry
is just the ash,
evidence of a life
burning well.
Today my ash
is in the wind.
The final wash
of rain has very little
to say.
2013
Breech Birth
Moving out of knowing well,
I moved death into me.
Fed it my home, my poems, my name,
my titles, my children’s security.
I clawed its mouth, crawled down its throat,
snatched up the swallowed tree.
Too far gone, the house spun off—
yellow, light rooms empty.
Death pulled me out of myself by my legs.
Smoothed my hair. Smelled me.
2013