 Photograph by Reka Jellema. Copyright June 25, 2015 Blue China Plate
If you shook the earth, if between cymbal and snare, you lifted her up, grasped in both hands, maracas in a band you didn't know you'd joined, how would she sound, s'pended 'tween the deaf moon, a void and a sun overreached with ambition? The view of her from Saturn a blue China plate flung at the wall of space and shattered, pieced back together, cracks crooning at every jolt, an earth-lurch that crunched, a sprung reverb chord coiled and recoiled called upon and recalled Would the cool kids say she sounded seismic? Jangly pop or rock rattling the lithosphere? And who would listen? Who would feel the rhythm in capillaried secrets spread beneath the soil? All the severed ears would crawl like worms suckled on cake dirt dirt caked and iced and sliced uneven into borders bands of shaken brothers still only following orders By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack Copyright June 25, 2015   Photos by Reka Jellema. Copyright June 2015. Homebound
(In memory of Addie, Lillian, Ted, Ida, Henrietta, Gertrude, Evelyn, Vi, Gene, and Harry) When the cows come home we will gather round the commons until sundown fitting pieces of clouds the color of our hair now fluffed and white into a puzzle to pass time stuck on blue sky cut up into shapes with loopy blobs the end an edged perimeter blue scrubs will bring trays with grim applesauce potatoes whipped red jello quivering soft palettes lest we aspirate coughing out mealy yesterdays messing aprons gumming the mush accepting the spoon from our daughters hearing the chorus of remember of who am I? remember connect-the-dots? remember a spring day choking on the lilacs trampling violets following the cow path squatting under sunflowers fingering dandelions on our way to the fields? one of us will rise, go back to the farm where Pa will surely whoop him if he don’t bring in the cows Ellsworth, Michigan, he says it every time, when they ask “where to?” humoring his sundown the restless cast of pink as the sun sinks upon hundreds of acres of corn the dull clunk of cowbell at pasture and barn where Holsteins lift their heavy heads from the bitter grass and mumble home. By Reka Jellema Copyright June 2015 |
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