Tag: Francesa Bell

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bright Stain by Francesa Bell

On the Way to Chevron, My Father Tries to Save My Life

He turns to me while I’m driving,
says, There’s something I should tell you.
Says, Truth is, I’ve worried it could happen to you.
Says, Women have been burned clear to death.
Says, I know it’s weird, but I wanted you to know.
Then he pauses, embarrassed.
In his pause is room enough for me
to think, holy shit and self-immolation.
To wonder if he senses, after all,
how I verge on combustion.
The smolder I fight to keep
from flaring up and engulfing me daily,
in the laundry room and kitchen,
narrow confinement of the bathroom.
My washer and dryer spinning years of
not done, not done, not done.
Dinners no one likes bubble over
on the stove, and the toilet is bolted
so close to the wall, the only way
to get it clean is on my knees.
Some days, I rest there like a sick person—
head lolling, hair in my face—
and listen while my children trash the house,
glad the mirror cannot find me:
a controlled burn of a woman
where a raging goddamned wildfire might have been.
I stop the car, and he starts again, my father.
Says, You’ve got to stay outside while you pump your gas.

Says, You sit back down, you’re building up static.
Says, Spark’ll jump right down the gas tank and light you up.
Says, Touch something before the nozzle. Discharge your spark.
Promise me, he says, you’ll do it every time.
Later, walking room to room to watch my family sleep,
I stand at each bedside in the dark,
not knowing where it’s safe to put my hands.

In honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this selection comes from the poetry collection, Bright Stain, available from Red Hen Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many magazines, including ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and Rattle. Her translations from Arabic and German appear in Arc, B O D Y, Circumference, Mid-American Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.
 
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bright Stain by Francesa Bell

Things I’d Prefer to Forget

How you placed each gun
in my hands like a live thing,
a coiled spring, a promise.
The .45 with its heft and kick,
its full clip I learned
to slide in, then empty.
The sound when you cocked
your shotgun in the house.
It said, Put up your hands, bitch.
How I jumped, unable to swim,
into the cold of Bitterroot Lake,
because you wanted me to waterski.
Your photographs where I don’t show:
only the rope, the black lake, the spray
of something being dragged.
That you could shoot anything—
gophers, songbirds, grouse
you brought home for dinner.
I hated to eat them.
Their tiny breast meat.
Their easy-snap bones.
Snakes you killed as a boy
with your little bow,
standing on their tails to pierce them.

Your hands clasped
around my throat
during love.
All those flowers
you sent
in apology.

In honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this selection comes from the poetry collection, Bright Stain, available from Red Hen Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many magazines, including ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and Rattle. Her translations from Arabic and German appear in Arc, B O D Y, Circumference, Mid-American Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.

As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bright Stain by Francesa Bell

Definitions


Am I not your receptacle,
vacancy on two legs,
opening in the front
you pour yourself into?
You leave me with child
who will leave me
with nothing
but biology’s bit
stuffed into my mouth,
body split like a lip
and gaping.

In honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this selection comes from the poetry collection, Bright Stain, available from Red Hen Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many magazines, including ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and Rattle. Her translations from Arabic and German appear in Arc, B O D Y, Circumference, Mid-American Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.
 
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bright Stain by Francesa Bell

Getting Away

That fall, we pitched
a tent in Montana bear country
for two weeks.
Every night, whether we made love
or not, you slipped your rifle
between our bodies.
I dreamed of bear paws—awkward
as children’s hands, innocent-looking
as they swiped open my skull—
and woke, face pressed to the gun’s
steel snout, warm as our skin
by morning.
You were sober mostly that trip,
didn’t even stagger as you hoisted
our cooler up a tree to safety.
But I had already seen you
reeking and fiery enough to fracture
furniture with just your hands
or to crater the walls
with the pointed toes
of your best boots.
I had held you when booze
was a sudden blow
to your head

and you fell asleep mid-sob,
your hard body gone
flaccid in my arms.
Afternoons in Montana,
you fished downstream a ways,
while I lay naked on a flat boulder
in the middle of the river.
On all sides poured water:
a constant, diminishing caress.

In honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this selection comes from the poetry collection, Bright Stain, available from Red Hen Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many magazines, including ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and Rattle. Her translations from Arabic and German appear in Arc, B O D Y, Circumference, Mid-American Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.
 
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Bright Stain by Francesa Bell

Dreaming Helen Keller

Always the interminable spelling
on my inadequate palm.
One letter at a time, like a slow drip
off the eaves after a big rain,
and me, still parched, tipping my face
to the sky, wanting to holler.
If only I could learn to shape air
into something recognizable.
If only someone would whisper poems
along the insides of my arms,
a hymn sung by fingertips
across my belly, all the way
to the peak of each breast,
my body’s rafters reverberating.
Then, a suspenseful little story
unfolding up and down my thighs,
finally, a cacophony,
both lyrical and guttural:
let my little cave echo, trill, open
like a throat to answer. O, fill my body—
this clumsy, mute organ—with song.

In honor of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this selection comes from the poetry collection, Bright Stain, available from Red Hen Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many magazines, including ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and Rattle. Her translations from Arabic and German appear in Arc, B O D Y, Circumference, Mid-American Review, and The Massachusetts Review. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.
 
As a writer, Nilsa explores gender and diversity issues (including child neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, and sexual abuse). Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Selkie, and several other literary journals. It’s also been featured at Miami Book Fair’s LipService True Stories out Loud Miami, the Writing Class Radio podcast, and at the “Muses and Music” a multidisciplinary event of the Cream Literary Alliance. Nilsa is also the Editor of The Wardrobe and Doubleback Review. Nilsa can be found reading or at the beach.