 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
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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 
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 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 
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 
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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