Off in the distance
Close to the skin
The bleeding ink
And fading edge
Of memories
And old tattoos
Mementoes of regret

The raised bed
Retrospective
Of scarred tissue
The lines we traced
The tourniquet
Embrace

Scrape
This skin of moss
Reveal the polished stones
Weathered in
Our masochistic grip
As we forever
Stack in cairns
Rememberings
To cover up the holes

Pine boughs
By the wayside
You will forget
Soft needles
The scent
Of the verdant
An opening
Opening
Off in the distance

Written in collaboration with Kathryn Ross
By Reka Jellema and Kathryn Ross
August 2014

preoccupied by this bird
knocking on my occipital
  I lie
about the man
squatting on the windowsill
  hammerhead gargoyle
his cranial cavity is a chasm
not a canyon
  a silkworm tunneled therein
the man arrived
on a saucer
not in the Ming vase
  delft might have inked him
this is not an exercise
in retroflexion
  I am not inverted

There is too much truth-
telling
  I lie
about rococo and the ceiling
of the Bavarian castle
  Bardolino confessional & a priest
  named Theo
the flaking wall of the cellar
and my grandfather
and his minions
  a chop shop a hog Harley and Chapstick
about mixing turmeric
and turpentine for
that savory stew
I fed you
  saliva and phlegm-gobs, as it happens

This bird is an augur
presaging a Jungian carnival
bowling pins gyre
horses say Mother
a dog laps
another dog
round a NASCAR track
a rolled up tongue
a home-rolled cigarette
Are you on board
  clipped in
  pinned to styrofoam?
Did you build the pop can pyramid
on the floor of the Pacific?
  If you
  ask me
  I will lie

There's no two ways
about it
I hang spiraling
like a mobile
   driftwood fossil foil
   aluminum rabbit ear antennae
   a ribcage in a glass case
a cake box
without a cake
   now you see
Do you believe?

Say something
in the tongue of thistle seed
say in the language of snake grass
by the order of the cow path
a word well-trodden
worn as the cuff of your greatcoat
the one with the torn silk lining
something thrifty, smaller than
a postcard of Belgium
--never mind the lace and the chocolate--
Something, say, the size of a stamp
the one with Elvis
ink-greased hairshine
and a Redbubble microphone
O a-word-or-two man
cock-in-a-holster
say no one wears crinoline
fingering your sideburns
the unshaven bristle-burn
of your tweed jacket
is a language
I once knew
cashmere and camel hair
and a good haircut
a warm lap, a Pomeranian muff
the pup with milky eyes
that blinked each time
you lifted your demitasse
say cafe con leche
and a hot buttered croissant
and on the wall Kokoschka
landscapes compartmentalized
by horizons
or the open loop
of a Munch mouth
each line electric neon
say for the sweet sake
of the Virgin in the bathtub
the crumbling plaster up-against-the-wall
hallway thrust-love was a one-off
and the toxic paint chips ground
into my ass were a hallucination
like Eames chairs juggled by a street punk
outside Belvederegasse
zinnias blooming from a decanter
and a day-glo hula hoop snake charmer
say, would you, the fine-boned waiter from Taiwan
looked away when you spasmed
he carried the tray like an Olympian
say something to drown the death-bleats
of locomotion car after car a sledgehammer
horn-in-the-heart a hole the size of Arkansas
O say can you see by the flickering shadow
haunting the ceiling by the cathedral cobblestone
the cold stone and your hollyhock hand
and the word well-trodden in the language
of every word you never said or thought to say
by all of the lace in Bruges spooled out
to the ends of the earth
by the cow-path by the order of
the unsayable
do it with an accent

By Reka Jellema
August 2014

Wednesdays

on Wednesdays
we laid rough stones 
along the dry-lipped crinkled edges 
of his porch 

on Wednesdays
he looked away you swiped my face
your tawdry hanky
Assam-stained
we wrung each other out

on Wednesdays
I watched his gray-jacket body
shoulders like a hook
I counted his steps in the drive
passenger door swung shut
like a red rubber stamp

on Wednesdays
I retired to the wicker rocker
he left behind trying to decide
what was lonelier, an empty chair
or a single chopstick

on Wednesdays
you came from behind
covered my eyes surprise surprise
I missed him before his car was
out of sight 

Wednesdays

Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack (www.brendanbonsack.com)

By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema
August 2014

we hunkered down
in the unholy holes behind newsprint
sleeves rolled all Wall Street
all auto mechanic
all greased & slicked
we hack-sawed concrete sidestepped knapsacks
asleep on park benches
we fouled pinafores spoke in pinpricks
pacifiers planted in pie-holes
we watched you evanesce with panache
we watched cocked and maned we watched
one thumb with silvery polish roll into a ditch
tin can cocktail weenie
someone said
pickled punks
someone said
boiled pigs feet
we hunkered down in a moshpit of unclaimed legs
& crumpled bits
labia in pubic nests
ear lobe potato chips
a wad of chewed bubble gum
smeared lips
the color red
no one will ever read this
someone said
turn it off
your boy spilled Tinker Toys
dropped an f-bomb
we eye-rolled handed off
the remote

we tuned in
we hunkered down -- hamboned the gig
riffed & licked
cat-gutted it
chopped chords heads rolled spurt spurt
a kneecap snapped like a forest twig
we jukeboxed -- hair stiff on her cheek
an eye adrift sky-ward as-if
oh heavens above
someone said
while the doc dug earth from a socket with a toothpick
we hunkered down dirt-nailed hammered-home
wanted something to stick
in our hole
stop-gap
what we did to fill ourselves
what we did
carefully tread
missed our femurs our metatarsals
we missed our spleens our tongues our tonsils
we off-handed those harelipped kids
those kids flew into the vast indifference
those kids landed piecemeal
the Barbies we threw splayed
and indecent

The day the sky died
and I did not
swayed like a flag
of no country
five pure lights strung
by a thread

          yellow
        green
      red
    white
  blue

left to right, higher than heaven
flag-fanned breath
soft utterances
flagrant as prayer
hurled from
meager hands

The day the sky died
did I not
feel the loosed leaves
the letters
the bled ink
the litmus of prayers
lose the wind's momentum
and crumple
like a pillared horse
to his knees?

The day the sky died
did it die for everyone
to pocket Earth
one handful of dirt
at a time?

Did I not
from the walls of canyons
hear the wailing dogs
matterhorning anguish
the litanies of loss?

Did I not
see a skylark rise
Lung ta flutter of white butterfly
from the wasteland
a rope of dandelion
anchors flung
vows without words
lilting like lullabies?

Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack

By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema
July 2014

no one
planted gods
in the dirt
parted earth
grandfathered sunflowers
taller than towers
no one
grew seedlings
that reached
any harder

By Reka Jellema
August 2014

O stone
I hold you
dear

Wrap round your
Rough gray

Place my mouth
On your mouth

The gods did not know of
The scab of your soul

Of tenderness tendered
A circle of moon

Its powder a tinder
Liquid and soft
And lain upon the flint

Like a palm that says
Be still

Written with Brendan Bonsack

By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack
July 2014

Airfoil

Come along little one it won't be long
the blue heron walks and walks hands
behind her back we keep our distance
solitary beings
being solitary
I wanted to be a lappet-faced vulture
toe-sprawled on tiptoe
wings heavier-than-the-heaviness-of-all
glossy and black, weightier than an Oxford
Encyclopedia the one with the drawer
with a magnifying glass
I would be hideous ghoulish beautifully deformed
Gothic-hero-ugly the gaping yawn
of a cathedral

One day little one we will stand together
you have hovered too long
we will rise up and slam the air down
with monstrous wings
beat at the emptiness
stroke every soul we lost
all of the dust of
all of us
will be flour from the fists
of our Mother
we will be salt from a shaker
we will steal back the breath the angels stole
we will transgress: Celestial theft
Come along little one
it won't be long