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10/14/2014

Unraveling

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Picture
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

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10/9/2014

You Know of What I Speak

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Picture
Photography by Reka Jellema. August 2014. Untitled.
This flesh I found,
a fresh spot
in the sonorous decay,
in rotting paint,
the kind that strips down
to bare plaster at a wink
and balks when you eyeball
a window pane or lick
graffiti from a fence --

You know of what I speak,
O soulful derelict, my mate--

The sort of wall that crumbles
at a touch, moans a little much
for the slump
of the over-stuffed love seat:

This is our place. A petrol hole
We filled our tanks
surveyed the mileage, held fast
to the knowledge
nothing is useless. Scrap
metal and street chalk,
a dust bin frottage
mounted on remembrance.

We like to look.

We like to look, to book a flight
Below us, sprawled in neon light
Erotic City, a homing device
Or so the rumours murmur,
mouthing and lapping one another
slick and sticky
with what may
or may not be.


Inspired by the words and art of Louis Hawkins
By Reka Jellema
October 2014





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10/6/2014

What Shape It Takes

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Picture
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

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10/6/2014

The Cave Divers

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Picture
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

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10/3/2014

A Whisper in Reverse

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Picture
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

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10/3/2014

The Echoes of the Echoes

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Picture
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

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9/25/2014

One Petal

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Picture
Photograph by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled.
under the heading
 blossom   I find
shotgun shells  
   hollyhock parasols  
       wads of juicy fruit         
      ammo       
combat boots
  (don't shoot)

I find
  the places    
      I almost took you      and I almost let you go
hands up
        hands all the way up

I find 
  peace
    in the cracks
      in the tarmac

a white butterfly
   dandelions   
cattails

in the muck
  of the train yard
     crushed geraniums  
baby napes

  Your hands grew up   long thumbed     

I find
 
you
    still slay me 

One petal     ripped    
     at a time


Written with Jennifer Savage
By Jennifer Savage and Reka Jellema
September 2014

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9/24/2014

Encirclement

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Picture
Installation art, Encirclement, by Beili Liu. Photo by Tina Chang. 2012.
Picture
Installation art, Encirclement, by Beili Liu. Photograph by Tina Chang. 2012
The gathering is key
Plumaceous feathers
By the crowds
Clouds of cotton
Plucked from loam
A woman willing
And a satin sheet
Where do we go
So fluffed and so unwoven

We travel
On a foam of down
Traverse the hillocks
And the mounds
Of mannequins
Carpet them in blossom
And every softness
Carries in it
The prickle of the nettle's
Sharp retort

A sudden clap resounds
And then we move
Into the thistle barbs
So still in our encirclement
And calamus costumes
Look at us -- our eyes
They sweep the audience
When all have gone
The artist comes
Triumphant with a duster
And reviews

Reworks
The actualities
We occupy as muse
And as creator
Existing only
Where assemblies
Can see us

Each one of us becoming
More, in contemplation
Of the other, we are
Flagrant in desire


Written with Kathryn Ross
By Reka Jellema and Kathryn Ross
September 2014

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9/24/2014

At the Edge of Forget

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Picture
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

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9/22/2014

Men of Bicycle

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Picture
Photo art by Reka Jellema. August 2014. Untitled.
The teeth oil clatter
of the bicycle men
gear-head lug-nuts
kitted neon top tubes
lubed and polished saddles
circled,
girdled air on gravel

A rumble of crankset
skeletons arrive in bunches
bodies hunched,
panting rubber gloves
with multi-colored fingers
sucking air in,
spitting it out
clam-skinned
hamstrings clutched

And in the parks
gutter punks
keep an eye
for the bicycle men
swap bed rolls scout box cars
muttered mantras
plumes and ash and footsores
circled,
girdled by path and sign
by steel spoke
averted eyes

All men disguised
as wheel rims
zoetropic dark and thin
chow cold beans
spoon and tin
circling
and circling
teeth-clatter chainrings
and the blur

To take a stand made us dizzy
we had to make a move
back pedaling
skidding from bottom
to bottom knowing
every pothole 
every bulb-burned street lamp
every stop sign maligned
every eye that stared us down
Nothing to call home

But the call of the bicycle men

By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack
September 2014

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