 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
0 Comments
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. 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 
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  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 |
Archives
January 2018
Poems
All
|
RSS Feed