Kelle Groom
Alphabet
Septic shock room seven
Over the intercom on repeat
The man on the other side
Of the curtain is going
Into hospice when he leaves
Someone has to be there
The nurse insists he sounds
Like someone being stabbed
Presses the red button
For the nurse he's talking
And swearing
Alone with a TV sitcom
Volume up
A family laugh track
Behind the curtain
I only see his feet
On top of blankets
Even dying has so many
Instructions a button
To push a person
A tray of chicken cup
Of white pudding
One had to pay attention
Wear a thin flowered
Long shirt that ties
All the wrong ways
A long waist string connects
To a short string up by
One's heart
The woman in the coffee
Shop very slow overfills
Spills tea mops apologizes
Blesses me my own
Father has had a test
Will have surgery
Asks can he go home
For just an hour
A smiling woman stands
Thanks my father for his service
He names all the nurses says
How great they are they call
Him sweetheart he remembers
The smiling woman's name says
She's doing a good job too
And she gives him a magnet
My father says he filled out
A chart that can tell you how
Long you have to live
I say I wouldn't trust
A piece of paper a test
He doesn't know he's telling
Me I'll lose something I don't know
How to live without I don't know
Detaching my cells from my skin
And saying that's skin
Taking the beginning of the world
What is the world
There's a pain in his heart
He tells me a story
About a high school girl
Who failed the FCAT test
Who hadn't learned math past
The second grade so he got
All the math books for every
Grade and in two years took her through
Each one all the way to 10th grade
To Algebra II It wasn't that she
Couldn't do it my dad said
It was like having an alphabet
With letters missing and trying
To make a word.
Python on the Beach
What looks like a downed palm tree
on my night beach walk
down to the water's edge
in my quiet seaside town
​
is actually a python facing the sea,
​
taller than me, tail towards the dunes.
A couple walks toward me from the north
very slowly: "I've never seen a snake that big.
"What kind is it? Australian?"
​
A slim, shirtless man
gazes at the dark shape
as I approach, transfixing
the snake, triangle head lifted,
​
as if the man is saying something so important
the snake can't bear to miss a word — what
is he saying? Don't kill the strangers? —
while I'm now on my hands and knees
​
frantically crab-crawling the sane,
up a dune, too terrified to stand
upright. In the dark I'd thought
I saw fronds waving, maybe driftwood.
​
Closer, I'd seen a snake the color of a melted
Creamsicle on a thick white body.
When I tell my neighbor Tish —
while Frosty, a neighbor cat in our tri-plex,
​
pads behind her, bestted
with Tish, drunk with petting —
"snake, snake, there's a snake on the beach!"
Tish says the owner's
​
just letting the python
stretch.
She's calm as Frosty,
as if snakes are turtles,
​
the air alcoholic as she jogs
barefoot down the boardwalk
to take a look, Frosty tagging
along, the size of a python snack.
​
I imagine the python cooped
up in one of the nearby
concrete homes, body twisted
round and round to fit in that square
​
box, TV voices in the background
air conditioner hum, mold
in the corners because honestly who
is going in there to clean?
​
Rodents flung in daily, bulging him up.
In mythology a python
is always a monster born from
mud given tasks,
​
eating deer raccoons alligators.
A crow caws alarm,
lions and tigers
can overpower a python but
​
here we have a spindly
man who keeps him as a pet,
this outing a king of walk like
letting the dog out.
Clutch
It all happened in five minutes
Stick shift sticking
& then the clutch stuck
To the floor
Luckily I had the car
In second
Ran every stop sign
Because I couldn't stop
Because I wouldn't be able to start
Again a clutch of slow moving
People wandered across the road
Before me slow as algae on a river
Each head looking in a different
Direction: sky tree lights strung
Outside a restaurant with outdoor
Seating as I came toward them
A rolling boulder they luckily
Escaped & onwards for twelve more
Blocks until I turned onto my street
Into the driveway stunned that
A thing I relied on could fail
So completely without notice
Leaving me with a metal hunk
Broke wondering how a person
Is supposed to live a life drive
A car manage I went to sleep
& dreamed a terrible dream
In which I was lost in space
Beside me a little white booklet
Given to me Monday night
In a church in which I sat on a couch
Said I'd been away a long time
& I saw each woman in the room
Bow her head & write a little something
Until it came to the woman next
To me, & she said, "This is for you"
Each woman had written down
Her first name & her phone
Number handed it to me so that
I would never have to feel alone
Clutch from Old English clyccan
"bring together"
The gift of it wiped my face
Clean of any practiced smile pretense
It is to grasp & to hold.
Copyright © November 2025 Kelle Groom
Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry 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.