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      October 5, 2023UmbrellaHeather Bell

      my first job was at a burger joint
      I spent a lot of time washing trays with bleach
      rubbing the corners
       
      whipping clipped fingernails
      into the trash basket
       
      I ended up in the emergency room thinking
      about my dress that opened at the hem like
      an umbrella and how
      I had not worn it in
      months
       
      I was only sixteen and that bleach
      had burned off all my fingerprints
       
      A nurse
      in a whisper
      asked me if I had been doing anything
      strange with my hands
       
      The lining of that umbrella skirt was
      a strange pattern that always reminded
      me of lungs
      like it was saying
       
      this is the skirt that will keep you breathing
      and the more I didn’t wear it
      the more bleach I would dump
      into the industrial sinks
       
      until it was one big vat of toxic
      fire until every time I entered
      a room there wasn’t a quietness
      for the dying and
       
      I said no I just don’t know how this could have happened
      any of it
      and there was a hush to the room like something deadly
      sitting down like an osprey maybe or
      father and I got up to leave thinking that the
       
      doorknob couldn’t be dusted by police to find me
      I could go
      I could do anything

      from Kill the Dogs

      Heather Bell

      “Once upon a time there was a six-foot-tall woman with blue hair and a sense of smallness. In her house was a teacup saying ‘girl, you got this!’ and on her wall was a kitten hanging from a clothesline. The kitten’s word balloon said something like, ‘Hang in there!’ or ‘Don’t let go!’ Always something with an exclamation mark. Isn’t that the moral of the story, always? There is always a small woman, hiding her grandness, trying to fill up on uplifting wordplay. But today, this small woman sits down and writes a poem in which she details her smallness and why she came to be that way. Another small woman reads it, and from the tip of her hair a fire starts, but just as quickly dies. Isn’t that why we are here? To write another poem for a small woman to read, and then another. Until the amount of sparks are too much for the quick extinguishing, and she is a woman on fire, exploding into the world.”

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