Rachel Helm is Full of Crow’s Featured Poet for August 2009. I came upon her work by chance when we swapped chaps for the 2009 OW Chap Swap. I was taken by her clear voice and how her small poems lead me to linger and want more. Rachel has the distinction of being Full of Crow’s first featured poet. I am proud to present to you the musings of Rachel Helm.
Aleathia Drehmer, Poetry Editor
Canvas.Paper.
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009
I
I think, above all, I was most excited about gay
neighbors. I try to straddle two worlds, but wind up
abandoning one for the other with little more than a
phone call. Yes, ma? Hello? No, no babies yet…
II
I think, above all, I was most excited about the
prospect of sex, and breaking things that should have
been broken long ago. We’d made plans, and although
I don’t believe I’d call the event traumatic, I will say I
expected more from you.
Mama, we could have raised the kids, grown into our
golden years…
Ain’t nothing doin, Daddy…
III
There was rumor of a scar. He said he got you to take
off your shirt; said he painted on your belly.
I said: I wrote a thousand and one sonnets over her
shoulder blades and tattooed her spine with wasps.
He said he didn’t know anything about that, but your
ribs were mountains and your bellybutton was an
ocean of breaths and freckles and gooseflesh.
lavender
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009
I drowned lavender before I knew any better.
And sometimes I can’t hum frequencies –
the likes of which a father
is supposed to teach a daughter
(but we never quite got to days
where we both cared).
fireworks
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009
I want to break childhood against bent knee,
where dreams in ringlets
and pigtails are abandoned
in ways all but forgotten.
If I could measure so surely –
the way she did,
the way she does –
I would have no need
for these binoculars, which today
do nothing but examine
history books.
Rachel Helm respectfully declines to comment on her poems, publishing history, or education. In lieu of these details, she offers her favorite color (green), her current occupation (spinning the grooves for her local indie station), and her thoughts on the weather (she likes it best when the sun is just right – to make everything golden, especially if she gets to sit down in grass and listen to a whole bunch of trees, the way they speak to the breeze).
