 Off in the distance
Close to the skin The bleeding ink And fading edge Of memories And old tattoos Mementoes of regret The raised bed Retrospective Of scarred tissue The lines we traced The tourniquet Embrace Scrape This skin of moss Reveal the polished stones Weathered in Our masochistic grip As we forever Stack in cairns Rememberings To cover up the holes Pine boughs By the wayside You will forget Soft needles The scent Of the verdant An opening Opening Off in the distance Written in collaboration with Kathryn Ross By Reka Jellema and Kathryn Ross August 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?  Say something
in the tongue of thistle seed say in the language of snake grass by the order of the cow path a word well-trodden worn as the cuff of your greatcoat the one with the torn silk lining something thrifty, smaller than a postcard of Belgium --never mind the lace and the chocolate-- Something, say, the size of a stamp the one with Elvis ink-greased hairshine and a Redbubble microphone O a-word-or-two man cock-in-a-holster say no one wears crinoline fingering your sideburns the unshaven bristle-burn of your tweed jacket is a language I once knew cashmere and camel hair and a good haircut a warm lap, a Pomeranian muff the pup with milky eyes that blinked each time you lifted your demitasse say cafe con leche and a hot buttered croissant and on the wall Kokoschka landscapes compartmentalized by horizons or the open loop of a Munch mouth each line electric neon say for the sweet sake of the Virgin in the bathtub the crumbling plaster up-against-the-wall hallway thrust-love was a one-off and the toxic paint chips ground into my ass were a hallucination like Eames chairs juggled by a street punk outside Belvederegasse zinnias blooming from a decanter and a day-glo hula hoop snake charmer say, would you, the fine-boned waiter from Taiwan looked away when you spasmed he carried the tray like an Olympian say something to drown the death-bleats of locomotion car after car a sledgehammer horn-in-the-heart a hole the size of Arkansas O say can you see by the flickering shadow haunting the ceiling by the cathedral cobblestone the cold stone and your hollyhock hand and the word well-trodden in the language of every word you never said or thought to say by all of the lace in Bruges spooled out to the ends of the earth by the cow-path by the order of the unsayable do it with an accent By Reka Jellema August 2014  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 
we hunkered down
in the unholy holes behind newsprint sleeves rolled all Wall Street all auto mechanic all greased & slicked we hack-sawed concrete sidestepped knapsacks asleep on park benches we fouled pinafores spoke in pinpricks pacifiers planted in pie-holes we watched you evanesce with panache we watched cocked and maned we watched one thumb with silvery polish roll into a ditch tin can cocktail weenie someone said pickled punks someone said boiled pigs feet we hunkered down in a moshpit of unclaimed legs & crumpled bits labia in pubic nests ear lobe potato chips a wad of chewed bubble gum smeared lips the color red no one will ever read this someone said turn it off your boy spilled Tinker Toys dropped an f-bomb we eye-rolled handed off the remote we tuned in we hunkered down -- hamboned the gig riffed & licked cat-gutted it chopped chords heads rolled spurt spurt a kneecap snapped like a forest twig we jukeboxed -- hair stiff on her cheek an eye adrift sky-ward as-if oh heavens above someone said while the doc dug earth from a socket with a toothpick we hunkered down dirt-nailed hammered-home wanted something to stick in our hole stop-gap what we did to fill ourselves what we did carefully tread missed our femurs our metatarsals we missed our spleens our tongues our tonsils we off-handed those harelipped kids those kids flew into the vast indifference those kids landed piecemeal the Barbies we threw splayed and indecent  The day the sky died
and I did not swayed like a flag of no country five pure lights strung by a thread yellow green red white blue left to right, higher than heaven flag-fanned breath soft utterances flagrant as prayer hurled from meager hands The day the sky died did I not feel the loosed leaves the letters the bled ink the litmus of prayers lose the wind's momentum and crumple like a pillared horse to his knees? The day the sky died did it die for everyone to pocket Earth one handful of dirt at a time? Did I not from the walls of canyons hear the wailing dogs matterhorning anguish the litanies of loss? Did I not see a skylark rise Lung ta flutter of white butterfly from the wasteland a rope of dandelion anchors flung vows without words lilting like lullabies? Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema July 2014  no one planted gods in the dirt parted earth grandfathered sunflowers taller than towers no one grew seedlings that reached any harder By Reka Jellema August 2014   O stone
I hold you dear Wrap round your Rough gray Place my mouth On your mouth The gods did not know of The scab of your soul Of tenderness tendered A circle of moon Its powder a tinder Liquid and soft And lain upon the flint Like a palm that says Be still Written with Brendan Bonsack By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack July 2014 
Airfoil
Come along little one it won't be long the blue heron walks and walks hands behind her back we keep our distance solitary beings being solitary I wanted to be a lappet-faced vulture toe-sprawled on tiptoe wings heavier-than-the-heaviness-of-all glossy and black, weightier than an Oxford Encyclopedia the one with the drawer with a magnifying glass I would be hideous ghoulish beautifully deformed Gothic-hero-ugly the gaping yawn of a cathedral One day little one we will stand together you have hovered too long we will rise up and slam the air down with monstrous wings beat at the emptiness stroke every soul we lost all of the dust of all of us will be flour from the fists of our Mother we will be salt from a shaker we will steal back the breath the angels stole we will transgress: Celestial theft Come along little one it won't be long |
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