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

Not your death
or the Maui lip-curl surf
in the poster above your head

Not the knife-juggling
French thespian I crushed
or the jeune fille he couldn't save
in the cinema

Not the white pines looming over us
casting shadows longer than the names
of your meds
those spindled pines aloof, cruel
needling our skin

Not the last frame
in the last post-apocalyptic
TV show in the last home
in the last living room
    can
after all the calico cats
and Polaroids of Mom and Dad
    cleft us

Was it how we grasped
at hands clutched each breath
close to the chest
hoarded oxygen in tiny sips
kept our setter's feathers soft to touch
on the green couch

your hospital bed with its accoutrements
knobs and railings the trappings of an end
glinting in late afternoon sun
October-yellow leaves
forever diagnose
forever

a settee for last days
equipped with dubious apparatus
the slurp and whir of the respirator
an exercise in improvisation,

    this living

these arteries full
of toxins these veins and tendons
elastic and sunken
munchkin you shied
from this living

I hid with the Freud squad
watching reality
on a flat screen
blood drug-muddied
brain chemistry compromise
the day the white coats
bagged you

    this living

this dog petting
we had to reach
to stroke our setter's ears
it was our ritual
he licked and licked
cleaned your feeding tube
your heavy lids half drawn watching
fluids sink and resurface

   Not your death

Not your death
nor the Thai goddess bong hit
incantations of Aurelio Rodriguez
or sky miles leading straight
to cumulus
     can
after all
the spit-up and graves dug

Not your death
or the heavens
looming like cliffs
     can
after all
the chemo & burial
rift us

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

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