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 
Installation art, Encirclement, by Beili Liu. Photo by Tina Chang. 2012.
Installation art, Encirclement, by Beili Liu. Photograph by Tina Chang. 2012
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 
Photography by Reka Jellema. June 2014. Untitled.
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 
Photo Art by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled.
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 
Photo art by Reka Jellema. August 2014. Untitled.
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 
Photo Art by Reka Jellema 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 
Photograph Untitled. Taken at ArtPrize, Grand Rapids, Michigan. By Reka Jellema. 2010.
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 |
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