Category: Children

The Others

11/5/2014

Photo Art by Reka Jellema. November 5, 2014. Untitled.

the others
slipped into themselves
by moonlight
slipped out of sight
and through
our neighbour`s pasture
where a rope
stretched from one oak
to another
cloaked
in billowed bed sheets
loosed to the October night
cotton shirtsleeves
pale and cold
in almost dark
birds aloof
livening the clothesline
little boys and girls
materialised
as the ones
they were alive
daisies radiating waves
of glowing white
stung by a day
in the sun
appeasing gods
who spaded
holes and grew them up
just to watch
them pass away
leaving her, a tree
devoid of leaves
empty arms cradling
the unfilled spaces
swing sets lilt
in breezes idle
there are rooms
she never enters
drawers of clothes
that just won`t open
lest the cloying
baby talcum rise
to sting her eyes
the others -
they have others
left behind
her eyes
spill reveries
that never can be
how neatly made
the bunk beds
the little boys and girls
go out to play
they sit in a place
at the back
of the throat
and keep
close company
with sorrow
the others
slip into a spell
life after life
one day
the world will open up
earth will meet sky
hand over hand
we shall shimmy
up rope,
watery hope
upon watery hope

Written by Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross
Copyright Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross
November 5, 2014

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I Cover You With Ferns

9/23/2014

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Photo Art by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled.

Have you never tried to hold ferns
feathery ferns
overgrown ferns
ferns rippling

have you not
thrown yourself on the ground
to study the underside of ferns
veiny leafy ferns
ferns waving

do you not see now
how inadequate
our grope for words,
picture undulating
tongues tipping
toward the verdant

do you not know
how deficient
this fumbling
when once-fleshed
girls, boys
sleep under beds
of ferns

how futile
to reach for ferns
to know fern-ness
to wonder what Plato
would have said or Aristotle
about the nature
of ferns

a keen green
keening
in sun stains
ferns en masse
a jungle of ferns

all over your body
ferns
O little boy
your voice
never quieted
it rasps on
and I cover you with ferns

By Reka Jellema
September 2014

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AirFoil

8/4/2014

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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

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August 01st, 2014

8/1/2014

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the son i never wanted
wants his body back
calls for a name a hand a heat grate
two walls and a basket
of books and the eyes of
a wicker chair to kaleidoscope
when you stare

the son I never wanted
wants a marble named Mario
that train set mom gave away
the lost gray waves of the tug boat
the steely chop-chop-chop
cold wavy-waves of the great lake chopping
at the chill-blink of sky

the wave before the wave after
and the wave to come
the wave
upon which he head-butted
the shore --

O little one
for the smoothed green stone
and the blue beach-glass prize
for every Leland stone for every
pinprick fossil for the footsucking
edge-of-the-surf sand-suck

it was nothing

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The Others

I Cover You With Ferns

AirFoil

August 01st, 2014

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