Letter to Kelly Cherry
(December 21, 1940 – March 18, 2022)
She was the girl in the black raincoat
even in summer, in heat
I think of her in January 1965
leaving her belongings in a little room
in Amsterdam and taking a train
into the wilderness
After Brest, Warsaw, Imant in the café
of the Hotel Metropol,
Riga, Indra’s garden, she returned
I think of her writing in old languages
fourteen hours a day
in a city
surrounded by books
I think of her reading a story
about a woman speaking
to another woman facing a wide, open space
It was a story I knew
<
My teacher and I spoke with Kelly
under palm trees that winter in Florida
Her long skirt loose dusk, violet
At dinner she gave my teacher
a message,
said for me to write her a letter
Kelly,
it’s January 1995
How do I leave
my belongings
in this little room
and take a train into the wilderness?
I have dozens of shoes
that take me nowhere
paintings of blue
water and sky
How do I leave?
What can I carry?
Years ago, there was a guard
outside your window
and he waved you
out of sight
department of transportation
a human heart was found in a pile of salt yesterday in tennessee at the department of transportation where workers prepared for snow
a man’s heart dehydrated by the salt had been taken from his chest in someone’s hands beating the constant howdy still
disconnected ventricles open to the air did the taker of the heart panic throw it like a bloody apple in one of the many piles of salt
(workers are sifting checking for more body parts) relieved to have it disappear under all that white surely the victim is easily
identifiable look for the man with no heart he must have said please or help the why of taking
a man’s heart is like a solar flare mayhem is from maim intentional mutilation it’s almost christmas
I can’t see the man only his heart the not telling not to another the never silent heart
taciturn glossy patent leather shrinking wrinkled by minerals almost like snow a winter’s bed
POEM WITH BUMPER STICKER
RULES FOR TOTAL ANNIHILATION
My goddaughter drew my portrait on the back of the rules for Total Annihilation, speedball
of hair surrounding my entire face, like a lion, body just two wobbly sticks, smile big as legs.
The rules: type dr. death and a cavedog bone appears, click the bone to enter the mission.
Begin a game of skirmish, the ATM increasing metal and energy, Big Brother tracing structures
in the order they were built. The codes continue on the back of a second portrait, my soulless
round eyes familiar, the family of Mr. Potato Head and Casper, only a wisp of hair here, curling
on my forehead, newborn or ancient, arms flying from the corners of my mouth,
jump-rope ready, dithering replaces the gray line of sight, noenergy, nometal, noshake, nowise
or loss share radar, share metal, share energy, share all, shoot all, sing, also shoot buildings,
cover the screen in black, view unknown.
Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a B&N Discover selection and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. An NEA Fellow and Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, Groom’s work appears in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Groom’s memoir-in-essays, How to Live, will be published by Tupelo Press in October 2023.