Wingednothings

Littoral

8/11/2016

Littoral

Cliché tinge of mauve,
This dusk's longing is all whisper
and no wolf.

A dusk mothering golden,
hanging on bowed sunflowers,
quieting the buzz of dandelion seeds
with a cloying love.

And how can we, the patina-tongued,
sly the hush
and cast our libretto
past the slimming horizon's bare blue lip;
a chorus in complete otherness.

How can we hymn,
accompanying the end of a day
we have no right to live;

We sing as foreigners
at odds with light-play on dappled saplings
and the whiskers of beach grass quivering the last green

The sea's brine and our eyes to match,
our ballad unknowable in the biting foretime pale,
as we become numb—yet still coupled;
mutable wounds in the weather's touch.

By John Carroll Walls & Reka Jellema
Copyright August 2016

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What-If

6/9/2016

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Photo Art by Reka Jellema

What-If

(For Bea Last)

If the paint dries,
it dries.
No question;
nothing stays
saturated. A fresh coat? A fence-post?
Canvases crack. The face
of the actress.
But what if
green was more than green, if
green was verdant
dewy,
sweating grass
beneath your fingertips, bottle-glass-green,
smooth jeweled chips
of green glass you find washed
on shore
what if
you pocketed the color & it bled
through the fabric,
what if the gallery called
& commissioned
your blue jeans
what if
the denim faded

By Reka Jellema
Copyright April 2016

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hummingbird

6/9/2016

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for lisa weatherbee cordero in memory of margery

hummingbird your body was a blur of sparkles pink and purple a little girl in a powder blue tutu & ballet slippers
had nothing on you buzzing round my head making a beeline for the feeder we filled with red sugar water if you know me little birds you know that thirst for the word for assurance for a bulb to break the earth with its green fist & unfurl.....

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June 09th, 2016

6/9/2016

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Last April Poem

I tried to push him out of my hole,
toad, but he wouldn't go. Too big,
they said, my legs spread
for the poem. This was after
those forced breaths, after
I mauled your hand,
bit a Popsicle stick,
gave someone a bloody lip,
someone in scrubs
cleaned up
and then I got lubed
a word, two -- got through,
nothing like a fully-formed
three-liner
someone put on a 45,
Elvis. Squeeze your pelvis,
whispered the poem. I'm stuck
in your passage.
A cheap shot, no doubt about it,
as his head popped
and stuff gushed...
sometimes a frog sings,
said the zen,
sometimes it sticks out its tongueBy Reka Jellema
Copyright 2016

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Before the Aliens

4/21/2016

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Before the Aliens
before the aliens came
it was an ordinary day
we kept lights low
tucked the kids in with marshmallows
jarred our songs in wine bottles
rowed them out in the dark neglected night
the bottles a clear blue
mothers skirted from their hoops
the surf sank and
the skeleton of the ocean grew
you died
kept dying as people do
we thrust an oar into the mouth of a burial

By Reka Jellema
Copyright April 2016

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Agnes

4/21/2016

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Agnes

what moss are you
inching up the rough letters of Agnes
graven on a stone next to a little lamb
of God? The older I grow
I think the more
on tenderness -- Lily
of the Valley, white violet,
tiny blue forget-me-not, remember
the cool hand
grandfather placed on her damp
brow, thumbing
a wet bang back, cowlick,
leaving the family Bible, black
and heavier than loaves
of molasses bread
weighing on those
of us left
by the open grave
under a huddle of clouds

By Reka Jellema
Copyright April 2016

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MEREDITH

1/23/2016

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MEREDITH

You arrange your attire
dressed in the end of days, a time
when summer sun calms down and strokes the skin
of the lawn, dusts all of us
with amen and shalom

Parts of you we didn't know would fly
are loosed above power lines

your reasons are smoke rings
your answers are punctuation
your goodbyes are wind chimes

This is not a burial

Adam's apple brother, would you swallow
a song? borrow a heron,
a swan, lift-off knees-knocked?

I am your Sister. I am your Mother. Let me cradle
in my knobby arms
the loss you have become

Meredith, I know
I know you are made of stone
I know your fingers are uniform.
Do you know how deep to go,
grave girl?
There's more to you than bone,

that girl, that calico
the marbled fur,
so mossy, so pale,
flirting with the gray
slant of old stones
stuck-up in the yard of beyond
the pale, a marker for every soul

Can we forgo the places they plant us,
under cedar boughs, old elms
that escaped disease?

Meredith, I know
you curl round the holes

rough-tongued
lapping at the grass and blood
and soil,
the tricky flick of feline tail,
a tentative paw
at the groove of your name.

This is not a burial.

By Reka Jellema
Edited by Brendan Bonsack

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A Little Hearth

11/7/2015

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A Little Hearth: Snippets from an Unfinished Novel by Reka Jellema

Darkness comes, as promised.

My sister, and her canny predictions: You like your water deep, your edges sharp, your face drawn, your fingers chilled, your sky black, your sun blotched, your heart flayed, your legs splayed, your men hard, and so on, Kath wrote. This has to stop.

Oh, for crying out loud, Katherine.

One day you’ll look up and the lights will go out. And that will be it. Darkness will come: The end of all things. And for what. You’ve buried yourself. Rise up.

My sister. Always big on imperatives. But I like her sense of rhythm. She used to say so much. Now she’s silent.

This is where you look into the fire. Contemplate this letter. The title of that play Dad read us comes to mind: Burn this. By now, this page is ash. Sew your own shroud. Build your own ship of death. You’ll not listen.

Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? There’s nothing like it. You think you’re powerless, and then you’re crouched by the open door of a flying machine at a high altitude, gripping the bar until the dive master tells you to let go. Arching back, you’re airborne, the earth and sky like the inside of a spin cycle. Like something dreamed by Salvador Dali. Here a cow, here a clock with its hands missing. The dive master tells you to let go.

In her letters, Kath said the opposite.
The trick is to do the unexpected. Remember the monkey bars in the playground in Sutton’s Bay? The way you clung to them? You’re going to want to hang on a little longer, Liv. If it feels wrong, do it.

In the dark I’m wide-awake and mole-like. Other people’s windows are little hearths. Go near to them and warm yourself. Inside, a staircase, family photographs of the kids at all ages as you climb. A couple watch blue imagery moving on a screen, steaming mugs balanced on a TV tray. Inside, a red lamp casts red light. It’s friendly. But it’s not about color.

Morning is when the walls and ceiling envelope me in their deadly whiteness. It is always cold and thoughts impose themselves on the blank canvases. My mind is a bleak house.

Afternoons are worse. I fall asleep and dream of open graves and the inside of a pine box. There is a place awaiting you. Forever after. Partly it’s the coffin and the claustrophobia, but the satin lining does me in. A substance softer than skin. Someone pulled the plug. Motionless. Moonlight white. This is my vision.

In the evening, when light dies, dimness warms the little cottage. I stuff newspaper and kindling in the wood stove and scrape a match against a matchbox. Set the kettle boiling. Fill Wallace’s mug with strong black tea and top it off with a generous splash of milk. For it is important that awake people be awake, I hear my father say. Through the glass, orange and blue. Outside, trees take shape. The moon materializes and stars are lite-brites.

You know what comes next. The color black. The Smiths. Hennaed hair. Glam lipstick. Goth regalia and the accoutrements: Piercings, drugs, sex.

Darkness.

Except it wasn’t like that. I stuck to blue jeans and T-shirts. A bottle of vodka in my desk drawer. Reading binges by day: John Berryman. Hart Crane. Delmore Schwartz. Lowell and Jarrell. And so on. Anyone who died young and badly. I read the poetry and I read the letters and I owned their madness, coveted their genius, and knew I’d never see twenty-five.

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A Loom

10/25/2015

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A Loom

Her lap is a loom
Her hands a steady weft
And from the weave a murmuring
Of moths on threads unseen,

Unheard, she listens for the man
Who comes to call, to sit upon the stool
Pulling at the cotton til
Her fingers find his wrist

Cuffed and white and crisp
The buttons tightly imitating eyes
Tucked away in creases and lies
About the place, about the time

As though by stitch and by
Stitch she could hide him
Crouched and hushed and hazardous
As a fine shirt pin

Copyright October 25, 2015
By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack

........................................

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A Wave

10/10/2015

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A Wave

The bay greens - the light of day -
I shiver
keep shivering,
Mom's Irish sweater unraveling
at the sleeves: I wave
at waves -
A humpback cracks the sea -
lazy shimmer-swims
winging the blue-green -
the ghost of my brother
watches from a wave -
Every image hangs
like a jewel in the void -
seeing, we are seen -
and what waves back
never leaves.

By Reka Jellema & Sean Reagan
Copyright October 2015

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Littoral

What-If

hummingbird

June 09th, 2016

Before the Aliens

Agnes

MEREDITH

A Little Hearth

A Loom

A Wave

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