 Photograph by Reka Jellema. October 27, 2014. Untitled. Veil
my eyes play tricks the little girl with the whisper voice between the trees my friend passing a bride in the wind her dandelion kisses whispering the empty banquet room two chairs dance the first dance the last vapors white lace netting the dead leaves in the wake of the gauzy bridal veil an oak threw twigs like chicken bones the flower children gnawed them to the quick shorter days light shifts lingering on mums the undertaker works overtime eternal rest the weeds remember her tenderness the way she let them live October chill her touch in the garden long dead Written with Jennifer Savage Copyright By Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage October 27, 2014
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Photo art by Reka Jellema. October 24, 2014. Untitled.
When We Talk About Trains: A Conversation up and down the depot, just folks a girl with a peacock hat skirts clinging to her thighs the heat of the passenger train in the lonesome quilted prairie the train runs a line of stitches vietnam tunnel a hole in the eyes of the boxcar men the lullaby of the night train rocking, rocking the way home when the train was a cradle that rocked me slow … and when you did the same between stations longing for downhome fiddling, the blur of corn, the open door of the boxcar and a mandolin postcard towns every train cut down to size one place or another it’s all the same on the orphan train today, the city, tomorrow, arkansas all of the straw plucked from the scarecrow Idling at the railway crossing the train drowns out the velvet underground remember that cautionary tale the headphones that kept him from hearing the train the day came nothing was enough no more gin, not one drop of comfort: all I knew I could count railroad ties I knew the times of the trains by heart head on, headlights, goodnight bars of light and noise apartment by the el train life train living low tide a flat horizon glisten from sand to sea the train roars through not stopping in every other life she was a ladybug reductive, red & spotted sometimes reincarnation works that way, father said, pointing at the train -- her face kept chugging creosote soaks our noses skipping from rail to rail shiny on top waiting for the ride to end the bleary drone of horn one man one guitar and a long blue grass song about trains the stop before the last stop hop on watch the rush of the Dakotas a harmonica grows teeth blows holes in my soul a harmonica chainsaws and the train rolls on bends around the hills seeing our own end and the prisoners below the golden grass just before the tunnel All her stories connect like boxcars mexico singapore delta oil it’s all the same hollow rain sound of an empty freight blowing horn sudden gray this always train Written with Jennifer Savage Copyright Reka Jellema & Jennifer Savage October 24, 2014 
Photograph by Reka Jellema. 24 October 2014. Untitled.
For Ted and Norma
For Dirk and Gus Ways to Say Goodbye (Part 1) I It`s 4am my darling, I have waited for your sleep To say goodbye The nurse has vowed to care for you That one with braided hair and honesty residing in deep pools behind her eyes You`ll not discern just where I`ve gone in the muddle of your mixed up mind Not sure myself where I`m going, Only know the longing and the love will be staying II The time is always 4am - the dying. Where is our place in this undertaking? We have known bedsides Our sister clasps your wrists and swabs the cobwebs from your throat These ungodly mornings: The dying They wait until Christmas to disperse III A brother leaves us huddled at the foot Auntie speaks in tongues over the bed I hiss at her until she turns to tea Little one you saw a man with wings he sat with you and counted beads on your rosary only Our Father could bear the end Written with Kathryn Ross Copyright Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross 25 October 2014  Photograph by Reka Jellema. October 25, 2014. "Jos" Canine
With heart of hound We pawed the ground Our panting hung in canine Clouds The chilled air Crisped our mouths And by our gods Alone we quavered Dogging every word Of favor From our master's Tongue We licked Our spots; divined A crotch From miles off Unleashing With each nudge of snout Scents by the millions Stars exploding Pungent edge of lawns, uprooted Trees, and variegated clumps Of weeds Our nostrils quivered And our tails shot up And by her lead We reached The promised fields Clover green And the dandelion seed Scattered in our Frenzied embarkation Written with Brendan Bonsack Copyright Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack 25 October 2014 
Photo Art Copyrighted by Victoria Pettella. Please visit Victoria's blog for more beautiful images: http://www.heartofawizardess.blogspot.com
Minuet
she held her lace as if it were a harp and played crocheted the holes the notes that plucked the dark her lace, in knots and loops a threaded tune spun fine, desire's minuet, the kind that plays your fingers in every key of blind Written with Brendan Bonsack Copyright Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack 25 October, 2014 Photo Art by Victoria Pettella 
Photograph by Reka Jellema. June 2011. Untitled. For Addie.
Unraveling
Plastic taste of water in her jug, loose threads in a crocheted rug How long before it unravels Remembering my ball in the boot Just wanna kick it, kick it and run My feet punching holes in the snow Mum yellin' at me -- for doin' nothin' Grabbin' me in a hug squeezin' the breath outta me, she reckons Nana's better off here She's far better off there, Sis Look at her she doesn't even know you anymore, and this place look at it No, I don't mean it like that You know I don't mean Don't look at me like that I called I wrote I came back didn't I? How could he look at me that way? he was a liar, a prattler, like Da. My raw bones crawl into the edges of that shawl The one Mum crocheted her fingers gray and worn This bench is cold and on the road a car slow and shined as death drives by it's hard to breathe-- the playground bairns stare snowballs at me Mum is near a memory I'm losing my way home With Kathryn Ross and Brendan Bonsack By Kathryn Ross, Brendan Bonsack, and Reka Jellema October 2014  Photograph by Reka Jellema. Taken September 2014. Untitled. EMILY (Inspired by "Young Woman on the Shore," a painting by Edvard Munch) once her dress her dress was white pockets filled with snow and ice her dress its hem was endless a sentence by Dickinson sewn on a scrap small hands gath'ring a view condensed haunted by the doubled-edge of solitude, and reams of braided words that seemed a soundless stretch a depth of blue her girdle fast like a finger band a gasp cinched in a sachet a cricket caged in a locket round her neck round her hair a ribbon of red an ache escaped its lacings and clasps undo this knot twined 'neath her breast Listen ~ Her wrist pulsed slender threads a beat beneath fingertips her wrist her wrist her dress was white 'twas pockets filled with snow and ice she walked in winter on the frozen lake she pictured the thawing she saw she saw the harebell field stared like a sea dense like a promise, a splayed memory With Kathryn Ross and Brendan Bonsack By Reka Jellema, Kathryn Ross, and Brendan Bonsack October 2014  Photography by Reka Jellema. August 2014. Untitled. This flesh I found,
a fresh spot in the sonorous decay, in rotting paint, the kind that strips down to bare plaster at a wink and balks when you eyeball a window pane or lick graffiti from a fence -- You know of what I speak, O soulful derelict, my mate-- The sort of wall that crumbles at a touch, moans a little much for the slump of the over-stuffed love seat: This is our place. A petrol hole We filled our tanks surveyed the mileage, held fast to the knowledge nothing is useless. Scrap metal and street chalk, a dust bin frottage mounted on remembrance. We like to look. We like to look, to book a flight Below us, sprawled in neon light Erotic City, a homing device Or so the rumours murmur, mouthing and lapping one another slick and sticky with what may or may not be. Inspired by the words and art of Louis Hawkins By Reka Jellema October 2014  Photograph by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled What Shape it Takes
See how this love for you Has channeled my face Trace tributaries From brow to cheek Give me your hand And ask what shape It takes. This love I gave in perfect drops Of melting snow The saline bead poised At the mountain top Written with Brendan Bonsack By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema September 2014  Photo art by Reka Jellema. September 2014. Untitled. The Cave Divers
Slanting shaft of light, spear the rocks And chink the porous coral-rivered sea Guise the gelatinous mass of blue So what we see is fanciful: Three cubs And a bear on the hunt for food A white dwarf star that lost its place In the cosmos A hammerhead maneuvers, descends Through the murk As divers shimmy, bodies sleek as seals Illumine the deep, her constellations Of caverns And men of the cave, divers Clung to the precious last of their breaths As urchins put all that faith in their tests Slow and as sure As geology's long howl into the void Written with Brendan Bonsack By Reka Jellema and Brendan Bonsack September 2014 |
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