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 
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  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 
preoccupied by this bird
knocking on my occipital I lie about the man squatting on the windowsill hammerhead gargoyle his cranial cavity is a chasm not a canyon a silkworm tunneled therein the man arrived on a saucer not in the Ming vase delft might have inked him this is not an exercise in retroflexion I am not inverted There is too much truth- telling I lie about rococo and the ceiling of the Bavarian castle Bardolino confessional & a priest named Theo the flaking wall of the cellar and my grandfather and his minions a chop shop a hog Harley and Chapstick about mixing turmeric and turpentine for that savory stew I fed you saliva and phlegm-gobs, as it happens This bird is an augur presaging a Jungian carnival bowling pins gyre horses say Mother a dog laps another dog round a NASCAR track a rolled up tongue a home-rolled cigarette Are you on board clipped in pinned to styrofoam? Did you build the pop can pyramid on the floor of the Pacific? If you ask me I will lie There's no two ways about it I hang spiraling like a mobile driftwood fossil foil aluminum rabbit ear antennae a ribcage in a glass case a cake box without a cake now you see Do you believe?  Wednesdays
on Wednesdays we laid rough stones along the dry-lipped crinkled edges of his porch on Wednesdays he looked away you swiped my face your tawdry hanky Assam-stained we wrung each other out on Wednesdays I watched his gray-jacket body shoulders like a hook I counted his steps in the drive passenger door swung shut like a red rubber stamp on Wednesdays I retired to the wicker rocker he left behind trying to decide what was lonelier, an empty chair or a single chopstick on Wednesdays you came from behind covered my eyes surprise surprise I missed him before his car was out of sight Wednesdays Written in collaboration with Brendan Bonsack (www.brendanbonsack.com) By Brendan Bonsack and Reka Jellema August 2014 
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 |
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