poems by rachel kellum
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Homemade Apocalypses
#1
Driven by indefinite predators, you run
through the multistoried city puzzled together
like a colossal le Corbusier parking garage, leap
knotted streets threaded through with gurgling
orchestrated streams. Traffic fog stands
in pillars of light and shadow like fluctuating
headlights cutting through an ancient forest,
casting dirty Jacob’s Ladders, beaming
from low hanging firmaments of grey concrete.
Unable to escape, peer off the edge
of architectural monstrosity, this last Wonder,
witness a vista of Trump Tower-sized cubes
of refuse baled together with twists of iron twine,
receding into the stinking distance, the horizon
a rusted Donald Judd sculpture of postindustry.
#2
Walking a hotel hallway without hurry,
your small herd of humans knows the earth change
not the way wild animals do, limbic, in bones
before brains, but—with nowhere to run
on earth from earth’s gorgeous shockwave—
by the way a giant new update of gravity
gently sucks you into slumped piles of yourselves,
the unknown babe in your arms at once slack faced,
like you, full of useless bones and bright-eyed
with collapse, the surprise of benign paralysis,
the premonition of a future anthropologist,
evolved android drawing you piece by piece,
scattered as you will be throughout the others,
taking notes on your precise whereabouts
when it all went down, a diagram of destruction.
Strings
Tethered to the puppet
strings of two dogs
arms and legs tugged
by scents I cannot sense
I surrender to nose joys
made not for me
but for these dogs now bowls
for love my grown boys cannot hold.
I let my masters linger hungrily
sniffing shadows
while I pause over here
on the dark road looking up
waiting to move on.
2019
small enough
august and july
mosquitos held me
hostage from the milky way
hatted netted hurried
absent starlight
impossible to feel small
enough to write
2019
Crestone 4th of July
Burly men and women shout
Happy Interdependence Day!
from the fire truck, smiling
everyone waving
at each other and mosquitos
kids scrambling for candy
on new, hot pavement.
Northbound, the parade
passes us all
turns right at Galena
for the other side of town
just one block away
turns right at Alder, southbound.
The crowd walks east one block
to watch it go by again.
2019
Vertical Prayer
Vertical prayer flags
Cling to their posts in thick rain
Still manage to pray
2019