poems by rachel kellum
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Rufous-Sided Towhee
“Eastern and Spotted Towhee have each been restored to full species status; formerly considered one species, Rufous-sided Towhee. The two interbreed along rivers in the Great Plains, particularly the Platte and its tributaries.”
~ National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 3rd edition
Chub chub zee, the bird says, while I dig grass out of garden mornings. Chub chub zee. I know at once I once knew the bird’s name. I wait days for it to come. Too far gone. Google offers only sex slang and a rapper’s name. Finally, I text my boys’ father who taught me its song twenty years ago when we were in love. What bird says Chub chub zee? Spotted Towhee, he texts back, Remember them in Escalante? I do not. They have a red eye! And later, when Grace stops by to help me identify a weed, she explains the bird used to be called Rufous-Sided Towhee. Yes, that’s it! The bell rings. “It’s too bad,” she ponders, “it was more fun to say.” A sadness flies inside. Like tiny Pluto of my lost youth, someone decides to reclassify a planet, a species, and the world accepts a new truth. Publishers update field guides, birders comply, but Spotted Towhee will never ring in me. “Drink your tea,” Grace says the bird sings, or simply, “Drink tea,” but it isn’t her voice. It is his, drawing out and trilling “tea,” and our boys’ high-pitched throats in mimicry, giggling. Memory opens like morning sky. I mourn the Rufous-Sided Towhee.
On Slowing
If you must go
from here to there
in a straight line,
incorporate a curve.
Another. A third.
2018
They Lived
My tiny Pisces mother gave four
hearts to walk the earth, and we gave six
but know we all gave more.
Ill-timed, ill-formed, ill-born—life is short.
They swam only in our darknesses,
wilted on the wet lip of the door.
But earth is just a shore.
A life is loved and lived in tender kicks,
the secret kisses of a pink seahorse.
2018
Feeding My Father
in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it –
if we forgive our fathers what is left
~excerpt from “forgiving our fathers,” by Dick Lourie
When Lewy
bodies in his brain
locked his arm midair,
I lifted the forkful
of eggs to his open lips.
My mouth opened too,
the way mothers’ mouths do
while feeding their infants.
The unexpected gift—
I found the truth:
we are all gaping.
I finally forgave him
for forgiving himself
for everything he did
and could not do.
Touché: A High School Teacher’s Sonnet
For Derek
The sonnet makes so many students groan
As if I’ve offered them a bowl of mud
If they were cats, the sonnet’s a dog bone.
No love of artful language fuels their blood.
Shakespeare’s long dead, no use to their rich lives
Of spending every minute on the phone.
“Off and away,” I say; their eyes are knives,
Perhaps the tiny screen is their hearts’ home.
I get it—know the small black mirror’s lure,
The raunchy memes, the vines, the sexy text!
But still, such techno banter is manure
In which to sprout a bard’s mind, so complex.
Groan as they may until the couplet’s done,
Some even say they had a little fun.
2018
Before Dementia Steals Him
Dad gives me this:
Please remember
If I ever forget you,
I will never forget you.
2018
On the Cusp of Voluntary Economic Uncertainty in 2017
Money auto-deposits monthly.
After years of milk-struggle,
Salary freeze, and now, slow gains,
Finally, a small measure of security.
Why would I give up
Living small and safe on the plains
For a new people and place.
I’m not rich but
I can over-tip.
I can buy art.
I can save for braces.
I can fear loss of comfort.
I can remember something
I used to know about being poor.
Magic was free.
Rooms of grandma’s furniture, free.
The forgiven land loan, free.
The majesty of Friday night pizza,
The sound of a generator powering
A VHS movie on a mountaintop
For my two kids, nearly free.
Poverty gave me preciousness.
That power is gone.
Now, sickened by
My own miserly arrogance,
I recall once knowing
That not even a president
Could rob me of peace.
Like a hermit in a cell, I was free.
2018
A Well-Built Home
To provide an illustration of her well-built home,
My new friend– tall, lean, salt and pepper hair,
An early Harvard girl when Harvard girls were rare,
Said she likes to hop up and down in the shower
And shake off water before stepping out into the towel.
Her husband of over forty years brought it to her attention:
Have you noted the house doesn’t shake, he lightly mentioned,
When you jump in the shower? (Her story in me–a rhizome.)
Tantra
On a morning when I hunch
In the shower under the weight
Of the exquisite corpse of the day,
Of the week, month and years,
Sidpai Gyalmo comes to my face.
Her vicious wily smile, lip corners
Curling over teeth needle sharp,
Tongue stretched out long
And pointed like a rock star,
Eyes wide and insane with will
To look upon a world that ignores
Our need for safety, comfort.
She rides on, black mule too small
For her size but vast, wearing skulls
Of worry around her neck,
Perched on the skin of the corpse
Of ego, our own very real
Impending death, and I give it a try.
I put on her face, crazy eyes,
Pointed tongue, exposed teeth
Water dripping like a baptism
Down our blue body and I am
Laughing at my courage to be silly,
To face this terrible world with
Its bombs and petty bureaucracy,
Its cemeteries, beds and kisses
With completely ridiculous fearlessness.
2018