poems by rachel kellum
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Hippocampus
Our seahorse
unbound
from steady center
bled a slow sound
like low blood sugar.
Sad to be found
in loss, we hum
with the singing wound,
tails clinging.
2014
Barnyard Light the Brother
Though half-joking you
Call me the murder light,
The murderer lurks
In your own masked skull.
I’m only half sorry my shine
Skips your shade helter skelter
When the barn’s darkest thought
Out-paces your heart
And your stomach thrills
Safe at the farmhouse door.
2014
Barnyard Light the Poet
I write illegible poems with shadows I cast
Over scrambled coyote and rabbit tracks.
I cannot hear the eerie yips and blood squeal,
But see the mouths, two kinds of many ears
Cast up toward the moon, my deaf mother,
Whose endless crawling shadows shudder.
2014
On Her Choice of Orange Home Décor
Her:
Are you gonna hate this?
Him:
Only if you leave me.
2014
Vitreous Body
When the pasture has just become
The smallest green promise, a pleasure
For patient rabbits, walk far into it.
Lie down on your back. Do not think
Of soiling your coat in the wet.
It is water. It is making you glass
Looking up so far. Beyond floaters
In your eyes, the sky is a blue field
For dancing sparks, and you,
Still and vitreous as you are,
Are the green, the sparks, the sky
Turning slowly in a space so large
It has no name so has stolen yours.
2014
Ars Poetica
When Lou Reed died, the raven told me:
Toss the empty chambered thirty-eight
Into the red blender with a bruised Peruvian mango.
Blend on high speed. Break the blender.
Drink the poem, sweet and sharp, a threat.
It will grow in you like a landslide. Bury
the living, exhume the dead, the raven said.
She never shuts up, pelts: no one survived
The flight, so write, as if this horrible news
Is a foil thing to stash like treasure or trash.
Orion hunts the nest with arrow pen.
And Tapihritsa, upon attaining rainbow body
Didn’t bother sniffing the pits of his abandoned robes.
He didn’t say a thing about the new Snow White,
Or snow, or white, or Lou Reed’s raven scarf,
Or any of the missing dead. All is all he said.
Thus my work is cut. I will replicate Amor
And Psyche’s melting jalus strokes with my life.
I will drink water like a witch and spit words
Like broken teeth. The teeth will say two things:
One. You didn’t have to move. Rest. It is best
To be still without leaning on anything else.
Two. Rest the word against anything.
Your emptiness is not the only medicine.
2014
NaPoWriMo: Write A Poem A Day for National Poetry Month
It's my favorite month for so many reasons. Spring. My birthday. National Poetry Month. Last year was grueling writing a poem a day, but I've committed to trying again. I think I missed a couple days last April when I fell in love. Still in love. Still writing.
Directions Home
Start wherever you are.
Take the interstate
East or west
Underneath the vetted sky.
When you feel lost
In broken brush
You’re almost there,
Approaching arches,
Our exit,
An orange afterthought.
If the bridge is gone,
Fly the gap.
Pass the red headed girl.
Gas up at the dying diner
Where locals look
You up and down
And frown you
A new spine,
Chewing burgers
Named for fat coaches.
Hold their gaze.
The road will curve
Toward Illinois.
Don’t worry.
Soon you’ll part
Fields that months ago
Were seas,
Notice dried vegetal debris
Caught on barbed wire, pointing
The way water flows
Parallel to V.
Over the bridge, try to blur.
Read a message
In lights from Jesus
At the Wider Bible Church
Who mentioned just before
The flood
Something about thirst.
Notice roads
Run out of alphabet. Start
Panning for the edge
Of earth. Don’t turn
At the equal armed cross.
Now is not the time
To be caught
By country song or sketchy call.
You’ll miss it.
The first house
After double awe.
Everything around it leans,
Collects tumbleweeds.
If the time is right,
Your dust might make
A heifer sneeze or believe
In ghosts,
Forget to blink.
Watch her watch you
Walking to our door.
Notice the strange way
She makes you
Breathe.
2014
To Cry
for my mother on her birthday, March 2, 2014
When I was born huge through a difficult wound,
We both cried, Mother. True, I can only assume,
But it was you who taught me how to cry in love,
And having fallen in love with my own wet babes
One by one before I ever saw their god-faces,
I know you fell in love with me the way
I fell in love with you within your womb.
I must have cried to leave the heaven of your body
For this side, where there is always leaving.
As soon as we learn the child’s cry and pinky grip,
Memorize the length of milky limbs and even breathing,
The child grows impossible, perfect wings.
We celebrate the sky’s claim of our deepest being,
Wonder how our heart can wander earth
In so many bodies. For years, leaping our perch,
They return. But soon enough the child grows
Sky eyes, the strength of two decades, and hungry
For living, full of longing, perfectly plumed, flies.
Mother, I don’t remember crying when I left.
How can this be? I left you the way my daughter
Left me. Without a tear. I was not hurt. I believe
This means we have done the work of mothers well.
The child has learned to love himself, herself,
Saves money, buys a ticket to somewhere else.
I remember you crying the way my daughter will
Remember me, wetting her neck on the edge
Of her new life, she too excited to grieve.
Mother, now I return to you on the eve
Of your seventieth year, and it has been a week
Of restless sleep. I turn in the bed of my fifth decade
While you turn in yours one thousand miles away.
The snow tries to cover us both, promise spring.
All night for nights, hard years follow us like lost children
Tugging our shirts. We want to hold each one
On the dining room chair in the dark, let them cry it out—
The lonely fear, the empty purse, the sorry hearse.
We have stopped hoping tears will heal
Unreachable wounds. Some people say they should,
But such people were never loved by mothers like ours.
We know better. Let us bravely cry together, Mother,
Facing every bitter winter and hard-won May.
Let us cry that we are here in each other’s arms
Another day—in love with our children,
Our mothers, each other—we who have given,
And been blessedly given, so many birthdays.