Category: Brendan Bonsack - Creaturely

Azure

11/1/2014

Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 1, 2014. Untitled.

Azure

Its azure secured, the sky
was a kite, sidling the horizon
so slightly, no doubt,
to steadier eyes
but I am apt to tread
in curlicue
among the upturned chairs
and folded parasols. I am apt
to turn within a turn,
to find inside myself
an awkwardness, a poor excuse
for a two-step
blue within blue
to stroll along the rigid stand
of woods and shore
where last my heart
was spied. The heron surfs
my peripheral and streams,
a needle towing its thread unseen,
the long land and the azure of the sea
kiss and enfold
in suture

Written by Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
Copyright November 1, 2014

They Say

11/1/2014

Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 1, 2014. Untitled.

They Say

The skirl of bagpipe
the fife of piccolo
anything to still
this prattle --
nursery rhymes,
ditties, doo-dahs, loony tunes
twined, transposed and snarled

there is trouble in mind
her head on the railway
his esophagus grappled
with the belt loop in the closet
a bare light bulb one tug away
from the dark

They say the rats never left
the Piper has them safe, quiet
biding time
while punctual trains
and ritual neatness of streets
grow like Labelled clothes
like snaking moss on alabaster nudes

They say Humpty Dumpty never fell
a modern Astaire,
lissome and el-
egant with piano hands
his wall con-
stant as a Shakespearean couplet --
townsfolk wiped yolk
from the pages of storybooks, made mosaics
from eggshells, grew quiet
at the songs of bright birds

A piccolo enough
to quiet trouble in mind
they say
air strained
through tiny architectures
Do re   mi     yes        no
Melody      skipping
The needles repeat

Do re  mi
Piccolo

Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack
By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
November 1, 2014

Minuet

10/24/2014

Photo Art Copyrighted by Victoria Pettella. Please visit Victoria's blog for more beautiful images: http://www.heartofawizardess.blogspot.com

Minuet

she held her lace
as if it were a harp
and played crocheted
the holes
the notes
that plucked the dark

her lace, in knots and loops
a threaded tune spun fine,
desire's minuet, the kind
that plays your fingers
in every key of blind

Written with Brendan Bonsack
Copyright Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
25 October, 2014

Photo Art by Victoria Pettella

Unraveling

10/14/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. June 2011. Untitled. For Addie.

Unraveling

Plastic taste of water
in her jug, loose threads
in a crocheted rug
How long before it unravels
Remembering my ball in the boot
Just wanna kick it, kick it
and run
My feet punching holes
in the snow
Mum yellin' at me --
for doin' nothin'
Grabbin' me in a hug squeezin'
the breath outta me, she reckons
Nana's better off here

She's far better off there, Sis
Look at her
she doesn't even know
you anymore, and this place
look at it
No, I don't mean it like that
You know I don't mean
Don't look at me like that
I called
I wrote
I came back didn't I?

How could he look at me
that way? he was a liar,
a prattler, like Da.
My raw bones crawl into
the edges of that shawl
The one Mum crocheted
her fingers gray and worn
This bench is cold
and on the road a car
slow and shined as death drives by
it's hard to breathe--
the playground bairns stare
snowballs at me
Mum is near a memory
I'm losing
my
way home

With Kathryn Ross and Brendan Bonsack
By Kathryn Ross, Brendan Bonsack, and Reka Jellema
October 2014

EMILY

10/14/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. Taken September 2014. Untitled.

EMILY

(Inspired by "Young Woman on the Shore," a painting by Edvard Munch)

once her dress
her dress was white
pockets filled
with snow and ice
her dress
its hem was endless
a sentence by Dickinson
sewn on a scrap

small hands gath'ring
a view condensed
haunted by the doubled-edge
of solitude, and reams
of braided words that seemed
a soundless stretch
a depth of blue

her girdle fast
like a finger band
a gasp cinched
in a sachet
a cricket caged
in a locket
round her neck

round her hair
a ribbon of red
an ache escaped
its lacings and clasps
undo this knot twined
'neath her breast

Listen ~

Her wrist pulsed
slender threads
a beat beneath
fingertips

her wrist
her wrist

her dress was white
'twas pockets
filled with snow and ice
she walked
in winter on the frozen lake
she pictured the thawing

she saw she saw
the harebell field
stared like a sea
dense like a promise,
a splayed memory

With Kathryn Ross and Brendan Bonsack
By Reka Jellema, Kathryn Ross, and Brendan Bonsack
October 2014

What Shape It Takes

10/6/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled

What Shape it Takes

See how this love for you
Has channeled my face
Trace tributaries
From brow to cheek
Give me your hand
And ask what shape
It takes. This love
I gave in perfect drops
Of melting snow
The saline bead poised
At the mountain top

Written with Brendan Bonsack
By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema
September 2014

The Cave Divers

10/6/2014

Photo art by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled.

The Cave Divers

Slanting shaft of light, spear the rocks
And chink the porous coral-rivered sea
Guise the gelatinous mass of blue
So what we see is fanciful:
Three cubs
And a bear on the hunt for food
A white dwarf star that lost its place
In the cosmos
A hammerhead maneuvers, descends
Through the murk
As divers shimmy, bodies sleek as seals
Illumine the deep, her constellations
Of caverns
And men of the cave, divers
Clung to the precious last
of their breaths
As urchins put all that faith
in their tests
Slow and as sure
As geology's long howl
into the void

Written with Brendan Bonsack
By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack
September 2014

A Whisper in Reverse

10/3/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. September 2012. Untitled.

A Whisper in Reverse

Your hand inside my ribcage found
Through grottos serpentine dispersed
A sonar ping, an ache resound
A whisper in reverse

I was your thready palpitation
A confession chambered, divided
I was the shape of repercussion
A skein, so many-sided

A heart you could not reverence
A clamor clanging down the halls
Braille fingers curled for clasping

Written with Brendan Bonsack
By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema
September 2014

The Echoes of the Echoes

10/3/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled.

The Echoes of the Echoes

Recommence the wanderings
In the medieval citadel
Your muse shied of the shadows,
Ducked from the spells
Hunched under gargoyles
Tiptoeing, barefoot and silent
Convinced of the afflatus
That chose you and prattled
In the mortar

The spiral stairs would wind you ever upward
Your muse in cower at the echoes of the echoes

Written with Brendan Bonsack
By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
September 2014

At the Edge of Forget

9/24/2014

Photography by Reka Jellema. June 2014. Untitled.

Our dandelions
yellowed in translation,
words paling, fading stains,
nicotine hands.

Even our fingers
fronding the air like palms
couldn't say
for certain
what it was
in dandelions --
blowhard blizzards
seeds swarming.

We saw the score
composed
upon the sky,
the whirling scherzi
the sleet minuets
clung like the bite
of a zither --

In our ears
In our limbs

And we danced as well
as anyone did
with a foot in the hive
and bodies
in hum at the edge
of forget

Written with Brendan Bonsack
By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack
September 2014