By Reka Jellema. Copyright February 2015.
Her ears twanged
with the twee-twee-twee- twee-twee-twee-twee of chilled chickadees Her body lost its breath Her spirit left The doctor said she died of death The sea moved mountainous and overhead nimbus and stratus danced Black and white weather the painter said, taking The photograph of a bleak coast A boy took bark in his teeth and tore strips from the tree his mouth bloodied with grief the birds fled still a nest still a knot of beach grass fish twine and smooth green glass This is not the end the Sister said, her beads circling in the embroidery of her hands By Reka Jellema Copyright February 28, 2015 
Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright February 23, 2015
Blessings
Our sons held flowers in open palms spun golden thread from air so thin it hurt to breathe it in, and broke the many hours it had been since schoolboys roamed embattled fields their lowered guns directing aim at borrowed time at holes fresh-cleaved in garden beds spaded for seed, petunias, poppies see them bleed petals stain the dirt, shoots of green to salve the hurt guns cocked with dandelions weaving tenderness links in daisy chains the blessings of the benign of innocence uttering the names of every little man unhand unarm offer peace lilies and open palms, amen.  Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright February 21, 2015. Lilacs This life purples before me This cold will never kill me implore the winter sky tell the gray goose to fly and harken the cardinal, painted on the crabapple, now This life purples before me Ice box air pearls our perennials our rosy children lost their mittens, snow bank burials, igloos of yesteryear This cold will never kill me we look to the maples, remembering green and holly red berries: Chilled trees speak to me: Take these lilacs self-medicate, taste the song of songs a slender thread spooled Lilacs breathe I am not dead This cold will never kill me This life purple before me By Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage Copyright February 21, 2015  Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright February 2015. Inspired by Larry Ten Harmsel A Parcel of Sky don't do much. soak up a single bird aching a parcel of sky, listen to oak nuts thudding as the warmth of July remembers October and the pang of pine rises from the forest fur. don't ask about the way she died, if the bruises were from hard-crabbed apples stolen from a neighbor's cellar hoard or the clapboards slapped from the side of the barn the rent in her tent will remain torn embers from the last fire smolder on every twig swatches of moss Cicada shells oak skins, spinning from invisible yarn from tree to tree the hollows yawn. By Reka Jellema Copyright February 14, 2015  Copyright February 12, 2015 Humanitarian
Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering ~ Kayla Mueller Let us be still. Turn from the headlights rushing the walls, yellow streaks on the way to other living rooms. Look away from the live feed on the big screen the words crawling, mouthed by an anchor of the news. Offer your back to white water, rapids and falls, quiet now. Hush the whir of helicopters, halt the barrel bombs, let rubble sort the rubble. Being human will require care, attend to her, no longer body, this hole is no memorial. A place people go. It is your funeral. Will there be fanfare? Will people burn their phones, shun their screens, and see you, the warm brown eyes, the joy of being, through the eyes of a child, standing in a queue, ears still ringing? such a pretty name, Syria: Bright as the sun, cradling everyone By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack Copyright February 11, 2015  Minding the cold minuet
your form rocks Hasidic keys the color of snow, coal a frozen layer over the river the blooming and the beating things just a theory I believe in and I reject; Did you think I would forget you your accoutrements the black kettle ringing on time the heavy sigh of the labrador as he sinks to the floor licking cold tile like a Popsicle your face lost in the white snowflakes sifting tonight the sting in my eyes tiny blades of ice driven by winter, shush the never-never plunk of the chords sheets of Liszt, Chopin blown down, the sour note of the pewter sugar bowl emptied; cold traces like stars cross the baby grand By Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage Copyright February 2015  Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright February 2015 Silos
Driving home on rural roads, evening clouds a gathering of cows, stolid muted husks under the stars, a pair of silos watch the silhouette of barn -- this farm, these corn shuckings, poking at the snow, the shiver of the crow, wild turkeys far from home, dim shapes in the dusk, lurk at the horizon, lurch between blueberry bushes, fire in the dark, while in the coop the chicks pop and glow, warmed by violent light, hens and a cock or two bunk down, feathering old wood with pluckings, I can smell brown eggs, feel the smooth shells, see the warm ghosts of cow breath in the field, and on and on the road, away from Evelyn and John, the plot, the old farmhouse, the schoolhouse and the church, so small and white, the chickadees, he knew their song, Dutch apple pie she made the crust, butter, lard, the pantry and the stores Take the row beyond, corn land, row upon row withering gold this winter longing for your gnarled hand, soft and damp with love, grandmother you held me in, cupped my cropped hair, stroked my furrows, ploughed with rough intellect, ruffled with poems and suicide and gin. By Reka Jellema Copyright February 2015  Photography by Reka Jellema. February 2015 Goodbye Haiku Bedside every breath was your last 5 a.m. you left us wordless All I know: Goodbye our time is coming Respirator each breath a shadow of a breath By Reka Jellema Copyright February 2015 
Photograph by Reka Jellema. Copyright Reka Jellema February 2015.
Wisteria
Take the photo from the mantle, run the cloth around the wood gentle, gentle, to shine the surface of its dust A sister fades by cornice framed her countenance her parted lips the breath of all she need not say Forget-me-not, O Mother: Mother, trust the herbs the shrubs trimmed to ornament trust Darjeeling flowers tamed in slow spill from vases placed just so Trust our house, the spiral stairs, the hiding places her violet tangle of Wisteria Blinds the windows binds the walls where weatherboards meet at corners and the gentle vine is trussed Wisteria, wisteria, enter us, twine her knotted hands that touch the grandfather clock to quicken hour by hour an ever ticking hush. By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack Copyright Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack January 2015 |
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