Category: Poetry - Creaturely

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

Veil

10/27/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. October 27, 2014. Untitled.

Veil

my eyes play tricks
the little girl
with the whisper voice
between the trees
my friend
passing
a bride
in the wind
her dandelion
kisses
whispering
the empty banquet room
two chairs dance
the first dance
the last
vapors
white lace
netting the dead
leaves
in the wake
of the gauzy bridal veil
an oak
threw twigs
like chicken bones
the flower children gnawed
them to the quick
shorter days
light shifts
lingering on mums
the undertaker
works overtime
eternal rest
the weeds remember
her tenderness
the way she let them live
October chill
her touch in the garden
long dead

Written with Jennifer Savage
Copyright By Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage
October 27, 2014

Ways to Say Goodbye

10/24/2014

Photograph by Reka Jellema. 24 October 2014. Untitled.

For Ted and Norma
For Dirk and Gus

Ways to Say Goodbye
(Part 1)

I
It`s 4am my darling, I
have waited for your sleep
To say goodbye

The nurse has vowed
to care for you
That one with braided hair
and honesty

residing in
deep pools behind
her eyes

You`ll not discern
just where I`ve gone
in the muddle
of your mixed up mind

Not sure myself
where I`m going,
Only know

the longing
and the love
will be staying

II
The time
is always 4am -
the dying.

Where is our place
in this undertaking?

We have known
bedsides

Our sister
clasps your wrists
and swabs the cobwebs
from your throat

These ungodly mornings:
The dying
They wait until Christmas
to disperse

III
A brother leaves us
huddled at the foot
Auntie speaks in tongues
over the bed
I hiss at her
until she turns to tea
Little one
you saw a man
with wings
he sat with you
and counted beads
on your rosary
only
Our Father
could bear
the end

Written with Kathryn Ross
Copyright Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross
25 October 2014

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

You Know of What I Speak

10/9/2014

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

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

One Petal

9/25/2014

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