Kelle Groom ~ Three Poems

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.