you were a city under the rain
a puzzle box spilled over a table
with a half filled glass of leftover
cold coffee and a bowl of stale,
neglected chips. you were the
dead leaves and the damp bark
peeled and seeking escape. you
were unnavigable slicked streets
and alleyways, the fumbled keys in
desperate search for a lock, for the
door to solve the riddle of you—
your warm enfoldment.
this is how you approach
with a knock of three—
black eyed children
that look to leave a
plague somewhere under
the coffee table,
over the stained kitchen
counter. a view to an
emptied bird feeder,
the top popped open as
a warning, and a splaying
of feathers. a periscope
that finds no sane reason
for this kind of persistence.
the twirl of a dress—
a tiny explosion, then the
vanishing. the want piled
like cut wood along a fence.
The knocking you carry in your chest can be heard for miles
(after ana carrizo)
A call, a screech against a grey sky,
the brittle door in collapse. How your
body is a toppled birdbath, a graffitied
wall behind a dead mall in wait for razing.
In the month of November, you are chewed
fingernails, the chipped polish stuck to
your gums. A field guide to survival from
the evening’s hard shove. A backyard of
rotted railroad ties and shelled seed.
You whittle the wood into a kind of refuge—
your slow beating heart swaddled.
Kendall A. Bell’s poetry has been most recently published in Fevers Of The Mind and Hobo Camp Review. He was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net collection seven times. He is the author of three full length collections, The Roads Don’t Love You (2018), the forced hush of quiet (2019) and the shallows (2022), and 34 chapbooks, the latest being all the things that will be lost. He is the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press and editor and founder of Chantarelle’s Notebook. His chapbooks are available through Maverick Duck Press. He lives in Southern New Jersey.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 