Photograph by Reka Jellema. Untitled. Copyright November 26, 2014
Isaiah Sings Father, here, I lay these at your stone I plucked that purple beech of every leaf, A yield of aubergine to cull and shuck And sew into a royal robe: We tucked you in. And now I make my peace With your patch of green Now I lay me down, the prayer begins And if I die before I wake? O mercy May we pass unscathed Before you any more souls take. Father, from that old beech I brought for you a rich Autumnal plunder Or would you favor yellowed maples? For here they come, gentle from these trees To circle the grave yard To quilt its lawn Your boy, the one you lost, sleeps on Though the scripture promised He will run again He will be young and strong Upon a limb of pine an eagle Looks down. I kneel Beside your bones, I tell my little one, Isaiah sings us home. 
Photograph by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 21, 2014. Untitled.
November chilled
loneliness into icicles before that winter walk with hulking dog and under the cold clarity of star no one could have told you falling snow was noise for the eyes, paper white scissored into flakes you cannot blink enough to blind and in the streetlight slanting the assault of lake effect wind lashing your lashes and your skin the cold could hold the buzzcock of your brain at bay, lobotomize the gray haze of pharmaceuticals If you walked with her you’d follow tire treads, stop and sniff leaves buried under drifts pretend to balance on a beam, an erstwhile gymnast shivering By Reka Jellema Copyright Reka Jellema November 21, 2014 
Photograph by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 20, 2014. Untitled
Find Him Find him on the wide church lawns in mid-pantomime, unshoed unshaven a marionette in monolog fingers wide and splayed as wheel spoke Find him by the bowl of steaming soup the simplicity of potatoes cubed and bubbling in milk, the one with wilderness eyes and desert soles he sees and knows Find him in the creases of her hands where some still say they see a path By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack Copyright Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack November 20, 2014  Photo Art by Reka Jellema. November 5, 2014. Untitled. the others slipped into themselves by moonlight slipped out of sight and through our neighbour`s pasture where a rope stretched from one oak to another cloaked in billowed bed sheets loosed to the October night cotton shirtsleeves pale and cold in almost dark birds aloof livening the clothesline little boys and girls materialised as the ones they were alive daisies radiating waves of glowing white stung by a day in the sun appeasing gods who spaded holes and grew them up just to watch them pass away leaving her, a tree devoid of leaves empty arms cradling the unfilled spaces swing sets lilt in breezes idle there are rooms she never enters drawers of clothes that just won`t open lest the cloying baby talcum rise to sting her eyes the others - they have others left behind her eyes spill reveries that never can be how neatly made the bunk beds the little boys and girls go out to play they sit in a place at the back of the throat and keep close company with sorrow the others slip into a spell life after life one day the world will open up earth will meet sky hand over hand we shall shimmy up rope, watery hope upon watery hope Written by Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross Copyright Reka Jellema & Kathryn Ross November 5, 2014  Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 1, 2014. Untitled. Azure
Its azure secured, the sky was a kite, sidling the horizon so slightly, no doubt, to steadier eyes but I am apt to tread in curlicue among the upturned chairs and folded parasols. I am apt to turn within a turn, to find inside myself an awkwardness, a poor excuse for a two-step blue within blue to stroll along the rigid stand of woods and shore where last my heart was spied. The heron surfs my peripheral and streams, a needle towing its thread unseen, the long land and the azure of the sea kiss and enfold in suture Written by Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack Copyright November 1, 2014  Photography by Reka Jellema. Copyright November 1, 2014. Untitled. They Say
The skirl of bagpipe the fife of piccolo anything to still this prattle -- nursery rhymes, ditties, doo-dahs, loony tunes twined, transposed and snarled there is trouble in mind her head on the railway his esophagus grappled with the belt loop in the closet a bare light bulb one tug away from the dark They say the rats never left the Piper has them safe, quiet biding time while punctual trains and ritual neatness of streets grow like Labelled clothes like snaking moss on alabaster nudes They say Humpty Dumpty never fell a modern Astaire, lissome and el- egant with piano hands his wall con- stant as a Shakespearean couplet -- townsfolk wiped yolk from the pages of storybooks, made mosaics from eggshells, grew quiet at the songs of bright birds A piccolo enough to quiet trouble in mind they say air strained through tiny architectures Do re mi yes no Melody skipping The needles repeat Do re mi Piccolo Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack By Reka Jellema & Brendan Bonsack November 1, 2014 |
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