A Poem in a Magazine
When I was young I read a poem
in a magazine in which the poet wakes up
in the morning, walks to the kitchen,
& waits a moment before flicking
on the light “to let the roaches scatter”
& I was surprised
that someone could publish a poem
& still have to deal with roaches
as if publication was like
pest control like orthodontia
straightening teeth like new
tires with tread on my car
& brakes that stopped
before they met the floor
& a boyfriend who didn’t
move another woman into
his house in South Carolina
or a boyfriend who didn’t leave
me stranded at midnight in a
labyrinthine house in Windermere
with a married music producer
whose head was capped with an uneven
circle of black like mold spreading
who kept trying to hold back
my hair like a termite-free house
at the beach with wide breezy windows
the bats finding another chimney
rats packing it in like my sprained
wrist smoothing the scar across the bridge
of my nose disappearing a bubble
of light protecting me from all
of the hazards ahead.
~
Turn Around
In a room once filled with coal bins
I said I wish I could see Jane Mead
It was evening and the long glass
windows filled with night
yellow wood beneath our feet
We were all crowded together
in front of a row of empty chairs
I’d invited Jane once to Florida
over twenty years ago
for a coffee house reading
from The Lord and the General Din of the World
and she changed the light
in the room I mean that’s what happened
when she spoke and the people
heard her voice the light changed
It was Nick I was talking to –
I wish I could see Jane Mead
And Nick said Turn around
she’s right behind you
I turned and there was Jane
so close I could have kissed her
All I remember
is her face right there
In Florida the one thing Jane had wanted
was to see the sea turtles
lay their eggs at night on the beach
You have to use a special red flashlight
and keep your distance
Turtle flinging and shoveling
sand to make a bed
The achy push of laying the eggs
Heaving herself out kicking sand
back over a blanket
Then turning toward the sea
and making her way out.
~
Dream Notebook
I baked you a cake with moon frosting
and the moon said hello
when we danced in the living
room it was as if you wore a black
suit your elegant arm reaching
for a time in the cemetery
we would walk a minute run
a minute our breath clouds
in icy air stones unmoved
for ever and ever you had been hypnotized
years earlier lungs free of smoke
we covered a lot of ground your father
kissed my hand from his hospital bed
one man with a wide stance baked a tower
of bread with flowers for two friends who
died and when he had trouble speaking
someone off camera appeared put his palm
on one side of the baker’s face and kissed
his cheek you probably saw it too
in the parking lot a man stared at me
with surprise as if I were a lookalike
I can sink down in the river hold flowers
even underwater
Supernova remnant W49B is so familiar
a kind of see-through childhood violet
and aqua but brighter and something inside
longs for it We thought you might
like to hear the sounds:
crickets frogs a wild dog
thunder heartbeat laughter a tame dog
horse and cart a kiss a mother and child
ships a train a tractor
footsteps
the music of the spheres
When you hear the wind rain surf
do you remember what it is?
*italicized list: from the Voyager Golden Record listing of sounds electronically place on board the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, 1977.
~
Kelle Groom’s fifth poetry collection, The Book of Miracles, will be published in the Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, Spring 2027. She is also the author of four previous collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida) Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; and most recently, How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and recipient of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s poems have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.