Till Kallem

Till Kallem, Ph.D. (they/them) is a transmasc biochemist from San Francisco who currently lives in Liverpool. Their poetry explores the tender and brutal moments that accompany queerness and otherness in young adulthood. Their work can also be found in Adult Groceries.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Command Z

I find myself snapped

a grounded branch under a sturdy boot,

cellulose flesh which will not mend,

now disconnected from the mother evergreen.

My umbilical cord was sliced

long ago, long enough

for it to matter.

And it matters now.

Now disoriented and spoiled,

yellow pith brimming

beneath my surface;

just yesterday I thought I could

reunite the pieces,

but command Z doesn’t apply

to corporeal reality,

now fixed upon the return to the dirt;

rot after rot, body bruising

like a beaten banana beneath my peel.

When I was still a rung on a tree

I didn’t understand why

they appraised me with jealousy:

They said I was “lucky.”

I guess back then I could still renew

a limb or a tooth.

Barter

CW: suicidal ideation

You will unlearn how to be human in the cloak of winter,

As the pain scales your inner thigh and settles in the middle.

This pain will become a dependable companion,

Searing up your center like a coiled viper.

Pain will be what you smell like this year,

The pain that will not be explained.

The pain that will not reply,

The pain that will morph and worsen any time of day without cause,

The patterns always dissolved away.

You’ll ride your bike off a cliff

if that will mean finding the solution.

You’ll think about riding your bike off a cliff

as the solution,

If there was a cliff nearby,

On your way home from the hospital.

But there won’t be a cliff nearby,

So you’ll bike back to your bed instead and

Curl around a furnace of freshly boiled water

Until your skin welts red.

Because other pain will be the only way to

Mask this pain, and always only halfway.

You’ll continue to burn your stomach and inner thighs

Regularly over the months until a brown patchy scar

Will fester across your belly.

You’ll learn the rash could cause skin cancer.

You’ll continue to burn the same skin anyways.

The scar will be the only way you can certify

The pain to your doctors, who won’t care as long

As you aren’t dying,

And unfortunately you won’t be dying.

Even though you’ll wish you were dying.

Even though you’ll plan to die in case

Nothing else works,

And nothing else will work.

You’ll erase your plans.

You’ll evade invitations.

You’ll cease leaving your room.

Because you won’t know how dire

The pain will be when you would need to leave,

Or how unbearable it could become once you already left.

You’ll forget how it feels to exist in a comfortable body,

A blank body, a body that could be painted any color

Not just red.

Your worldview will darken and constrict.

You will not be able to understand others’ bad days.

You would trade places instantly.

You will beg and pray to the you in the future

Whom you suspect may be your puppet master,

Puppeteering this pain for you to learn a lesson and

You’ll learn lesson after lesson,

You’ll plead that you have learned the lesson now.

Yet somehow you will not have learned the right one.

You will continue to barter with body parts.

You’ll trade your bladder for your colon,

Then you’ll trade your liver for your bladder.

And if that doesn’t work, you’d give up a limb.

You would even hand over your skin

To not feel this pain again.

And when you will say no one

Could understand being in pain like this,

You will mean that even you wouldn't

Understand being in pain like this

If you were to ever escape from it.