<div class="line">The day I finally rose staggering</div>
<div class="line">from our bed of kryptonite,</div>
<div class="line">gnawed free from the anchor</div>
<div class="line">that dragged its own boat down</div>
<div class="line">with it, and walked out,</div>
<div class="line">you stopped me in the drive</div>
<div class="line">to set one thing straight:</div>
<div class="line">were I to sleep, even once,</div>
<div class="line">with anyone else, you would never,</div>
<div class="line">ever, ever take me back.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">It wasn’t hard to arrange that very day</div>
<div class="line">and many, many days after,</div>
<div class="line">that whole long spring and summer,</div>
<div class="line">and sometimes more than once a day</div>
<div class="line">when I felt like it, to take a man,</div>
<div class="line">pretty much any man, to bed</div>
<div class="line">or the shower or the high-rise</div>
<div class="line">office building floor. Having been,</div>
<div class="line">despite years of accusations and interrogations,</div>
<div class="line">as steadfast and inert as a corpse,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I began slowly to revive, each man’s hands</div>
<div class="line">on me like a paramedic’s feeling</div>
<div class="line">for a pulse, their mouths bent</div>
<div class="line">on resuscitation, their bodies thrusting</div>
<div class="line">up inside me insistently the way a doctor</div>
<div class="line">pushes and pushes on a stopped heart</div>
<div class="line">trying to turn it back on, every stroke</div>
<div class="line">powering a stroke of my own leaden arms</div>
<div class="line">fighting, struggling from down deep</div>
<div class="line">through thick, sucking water</div>
<div class="line">as I fucked my way upward,</div>
<div class="line">one man at a time, and came</div>
<div class="line">bursting, breathless, back to life.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BellResponders.mp3"></audio></figure>

Bee Sting

On Learning that Woodpeckers Don’t Have Shock-Absorbing Skulls

First Responders

<div class="line">The man drives as closely to my car</div>
<div class="line">as he can without making contact.</div>
<div class="line">His truck window is down.</div>
<div class="line">He is taking my right of way,</div>
<div class="line">and I’m driving home, already crying,</div>
<div class="line">from the audiologist’s office.</div>
<div class="line">I’ve turned on the music</div>
<div class="line">and have just been thinking</div>
<div class="line">that somewhere in Denmark,</div>
<div class="line">an engineer lays her head</div>
<div class="line">on a pillow filled, perhaps,</div>
<div class="line">with eiderdown, her mind stuffed</div>
<div class="line">with equations she mastered</div>
<div class="line">in order to write the code</div>
<div class="line">for the music setting on my</div>
<div class="line">new hearing aids. They cost me</div>
<div class="line">as much as a used car</div>
<div class="line">and will not rejuvenate</div>
<div class="line">my cilia, cannot rebuild</div>
<div class="line">this foundation that gradually</div>
<div class="line">crumbles, but they have</div>
<div class="line">resurrected, for this moment,</div>
<div class="line">the voice of the trumpet</div>
<div class="line">and polished its bright tones.</div>
<div class="line">I cannot conceive</div>
<div class="line">of how the years she bent</div>
<div class="line">to her math books resulted</div>
<div class="line">in this flashing beauty,</div>
<div class="line">but I lean on it</div>
<div class="line">the way a person leans</div>
<div class="line">on a crutch when her knee</div>
<div class="line">has given out, the way</div>
<div class="line">I lean on Telemann who wrote</div>
<div class="line">this concerto almost 300 years ago,</div>
<div class="line">each note big enough</div>
<div class="line">to compensate—across time—for loss,</div>
<div class="line">for the man passing slowly by,</div>
<div class="line">menace blaring from his eyes,</div>
<div class="line">as, triumphant, he raises</div>
<div class="line">his middle finger like a baton.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BellConduction.mp3"></audio></figure>

Adult Night at Skate World

Second Wife

Conduction

<div class="line">After the plumbers leave, having installed</div>
<div class="line">new toilets because the old ones failed</div>
<div class="line">to whisk fully away what our bodies discarded,</div>
<div class="line">and we are of an age where we crave</div>
<div class="line">the satisfaction of good and final riddance,</div>
<div class="line">of never seeing again what we have chosen</div>
<div class="line">to set down, the ultimate, sweet pleasure</div>
<div class="line">of divestment, and after they have accidentally</div>
<div class="line">allowed my old beagle to escape, and I walk</div>
<div class="line">up and down the streets calling and whistling</div>
<div class="line">and return to find her waiting at the front door,</div>
<div class="line">triumphant, a long-dead bird’s leg bones gripped</div>
<div class="line">in her mouth, talons still attached,</div>
<div class="line">I read in the paper that a foot was found on a beach</div>
<div class="line">in Richmond, still laced into its Saucony shoe,</div>
<div class="line">and the article asks breezily for the public’s assistance,</div>
<div class="line">as if someone has unwittingly lost a right foot,</div>
<div class="line">size 6 or 7, perhaps while out running,</div>
<div class="line">before going on to clarify that every couple</div>
<div class="line">of months, small parts of people wash up</div>
<div class="line">on Bay Area beaches, mostly fingers or feet broken</div>
<div class="line">loose at the water’s slow insistence</div>
<div class="line">from the bodies of suicides who’ve tossed themselves</div>
<div class="line">whole from one bridge or another, dropping</div>
<div class="line">as that bird must have, finished finally</div>
<div class="line">with the entire enterprise, believing the Bay</div>
<div class="line">to be as powerful as a new toilet, able to afford</div>
<div class="line">a person the simple luxury of washing away</div>
<div class="line">the whole stinking, burdensome mess,</div>
<div class="line">but something keeps keeping us,</div>
<div class="line">a scavenging dog, a tide, a faulty toilet,</div>
<div class="line">even the Bay unable to stop our little bits,</div>
<div class="line">our wasted, torn-apart pieces</div>
<div class="line">from clinging to shore in refusal.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BellParts.mp3"></audio></figure>

What the Heart Does

Poets Respond

Resurgam in the Delta Pavonis System

Small Parts

<div class="line">Everything comes back to haunt us</div>
<div class="line">one day the boy you beat</div>
<div class="line">up a long time ago</div>
<div class="line">stands before you in the street car</div>
<div class="line">he is like you now around</div>
<div class="line"> </div>
<div class="line">sixty his hair thin like</div>
<div class="line">yours generally he looks</div>
<div class="line">like you moves like</div>
<div class="line">you as he approaches you</div>
<div class="line">walks past gets off</div>
<div class="line"> </div>
<div class="line">at the next stop</div>
<div class="line">that was it you turn</div>
<div class="line">after him and note</div>
<div class="line">the stop and tomorrow</div>
<div class="line">you will forget it</div>
<div class="line"> </div>
<div class="line"> </div>
<blockquote>
<div class="line" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Translated from the German by Francesca Bell</span></div>
</blockquote><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/SessnerDay.mp3"></audio></figure>

Anesthesia

Wingspan

One Day

<div class="line">I decide it would be a good idea to write them down,</div>
<div class="line">the first four things you’re likely to forget on your journey</div>
<div class="line">down dementia’s long path, a path that will</div>
<div class="line">eventually be strewn with all your discarded memories</div>
<div class="line">the way the path to the person dead from hypothermia</div>
<div class="line">is strewn with their cast-off articles of clothing</div>
<div class="line">that lie bright and useless on the snow.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">But I can’t remember them.</div>
<div class="line">The four things.</div>
<div class="line">Or the article’s title.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I’m pretty sure there are four things, but four is</div>
<div class="line">my lucky number, and maybe I’ve merely glommed</div>
<div class="line">onto what is familiar, the way a person who’s wandered</div>
<div class="line">off-course might walk in whatever wrong direction</div>
<div class="line">most resembles home. I try searching my phone,</div>
<div class="line">where I read the piece, but it turns out I can’t find the way</div>
<div class="line">to my phone’s memory either, and when I Google</div>
<div class="line"><em>four things you may forget</em> and <em>signs of dementia</em>,</div>
<div class="line">several lists of ten items appear, and ten is at least six</div>
<div class="line">too many to keep track of, so I don’t bother</div>
<div class="line">writing any of it down.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">For some reason, this reminds me of the story</div>
<div class="line">I told last night at dinner, a story I meant to take note of,</div>
<div class="line">but first, I think, since I’m constructing records,</div>
<div class="line">I should finally make that list</div>
<div class="line">of all the men I’ve slept with. So I do,</div>
<div class="line">but I reach early on one name I simply cannot summon,</div>
<div class="line">the name of the guy who took me</div>
<div class="line">to the snow for a whole day and only brought</div>
<div class="line">one sandwich, which turned out to be just</div>
<div class="line">what sleeping with him was like: a trip to the cold</div>
<div class="line">with only half a sandwich to hold you.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I write <em>Sandwiches </em>where his name should be and go on.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">But when I reach the end of the list,</div>
<div class="line">my lifetime total is five under</div>
<div class="line">what I thought I tallied years ago</div>
<div class="line">meaning five additional names</div>
<div class="line">and the men they belong to may</div>
<div class="line">(or may not) have leapt from memory’s cliff.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Frustrated, I turn the page</div>
<div class="line">to write the story I told at last night’s dinner—</div>
<div class="line">a story I might, in fact, have told my family before,</div>
<div class="line">now that I think of it—and find that it, too, has vanished</div>
<div class="line">along with those men I now can neither remember</div>
<div class="line">nor forget, men who may have entered my body without leaving</div>
<div class="line">so much as a trace on my mind.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Perhaps it will return to me later,</div>
<div class="line">the story. Maybe even the men</div>
<div class="line">will wander back across my blinkered</div>
<div class="line">brain, naked, with or without</div>
<div class="line">sandwiches, maybe a little snow falling</div>
<div class="line">outside the window, their penises</div>
<div class="line">memorable this time, overpowering enough</div>
<div class="line">that my mind will finally have</div>
<div class="line">something solid to hold onto.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">But I don’t really think so.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I don’t think I’ll find the way</div>
<div class="line">to those memories again.</div>
<div class="line">Or to the article about the four early</div>
<div class="line">losses of dementia, one more list of losses,</div>
<div class="line">too many losses to possibly keep</div>
<div class="line">count of.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">There is a name for this precise feeling,</div>
<div class="line">I know there is, this feeling that wells</div>
<div class="line">and wells and almost spills over.</div>
<div class="line">Like a Scot with snow,</div>
<div class="line">I’m a poet with hundreds</div>
<div class="line">of different ways to name <em>sorrow</em>,</div>
<div class="line">but, though I sit for a long time</div>
<div class="line">as dusk seeps in,</div>
<div class="line">I’m only ever able</div>
<div class="line">to put my finger</div>
<div class="line">on one.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BellSandwiches.mp3"></audio></figure>

Encephalon

The People’s Republic of Sleepless Nights

Sandwiches

<p><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YgG7hUrwj3E" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<div class="line">and tell him personally,</div>
<div class="line"><em>I’m sorry, but I’m going</em></div>
<div class="line">to have to pass on this.</div>
<div class="line">Though your piece</div>
<div class="line">held my attention through</div>
<div class="line">the first few screenings,</div>
<div class="line">I don’t feel it is a good fit</div>
<div class="line">for me at this time.</div>
<div class="line">Please know it received</div>
<div class="line">my careful consideration.</div>
<div class="line">I thank you for allowing</div>
<div class="line">me to have a look,</div>
<div class="line">and I wish you</div>
<div class="line">the very best of luck</div>
<div class="line">placing it elsewhere.</div>


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January 8, 2019I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My HandFrancesca Bell

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January 8, 2019I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My HandFrancesca Bell

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First Responders by Francesca Bell

Conduction by Francesca Bell

Small Parts by Francesca Bell

One Day by Francesca Bell