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

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

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

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

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

once you made a line
a line wandered
grew a skin
no topography
nobody
had seen before

how fine
twas said
a gourd, a cake of cheese
imprisoned in a square
life stilled

this spirit seized
a thing possessed
this work
some sighed --
nothing like it

Exorcise colloquial
a jug to raise
and drink,
framed behind
a glass

one chained
the piece
to keep it safe
and safe
it ever was

how fine
some asked
is fine art --
the stuff
regurgitated
and swallowed

on view like the body
in the box
but paler

By Reka Jellema
September 2014

We pulled up
In the lay by
To let
the seasons pass

Browned oak
Leaves and a
Pair of hands
Turned on
A branch

Upon occasion
Our shoulders
Touched

Snow bunched
In the wheel hubs

The roadside ponies
Quieted we missed ice
Turned off winter,
A television
Screen

We watched the
Seasons pass

Two oranges
Our picnic
Sun dimmed
Petrol-fumed breath

You stood apart
Under a new
Moon I fell
Asleep to the Levee

Deep in a
Pouch of the
Down low tones
Of you,

Singing autumn
On the way

In the lay by
Where we
Stopped -- shivering
Ice laced milkweed

Seasonally

By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack
July 2014

preoccupied by this bird
knocking on my occipital
  I lie
about the man
squatting on the windowsill
  hammerhead gargoyle
his cranial cavity is a chasm
not a canyon
  a silkworm tunneled therein
the man arrived
on a saucer
not in the Ming vase
  delft might have inked him
this is not an exercise
in retroflexion
  I am not inverted

There is too much truth-
telling
  I lie
about rococo and the ceiling
of the Bavarian castle
  Bardolino confessional & a priest
  named Theo
the flaking wall of the cellar
and my grandfather
and his minions
  a chop shop a hog Harley and Chapstick
about mixing turmeric
and turpentine for
that savory stew
I fed you
  saliva and phlegm-gobs, as it happens

This bird is an augur
presaging a Jungian carnival
bowling pins gyre
horses say Mother
a dog laps
another dog
round a NASCAR track
a rolled up tongue
a home-rolled cigarette
Are you on board
  clipped in
  pinned to styrofoam?
Did you build the pop can pyramid
on the floor of the Pacific?
  If you
  ask me
  I will lie

There's no two ways
about it
I hang spiraling
like a mobile
   driftwood fossil foil
   aluminum rabbit ear antennae
   a ribcage in a glass case
a cake box
without a cake
   now you see
Do you believe?

Wednesdays

on Wednesdays
we laid rough stones 
along the dry-lipped crinkled edges 
of his porch 

on Wednesdays
he looked away you swiped my face
your tawdry hanky
Assam-stained
we wrung each other out

on Wednesdays
I watched his gray-jacket body
shoulders like a hook
I counted his steps in the drive
passenger door swung shut
like a red rubber stamp

on Wednesdays
I retired to the wicker rocker
he left behind trying to decide
what was lonelier, an empty chair
or a single chopstick

on Wednesdays
you came from behind
covered my eyes surprise surprise
I missed him before his car was
out of sight 

Wednesdays

Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack (www.brendanbonsack.com)

By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema
August 2014