June 24, 2022
Tomorrow, I will attend a workshop titled Singing
in the Dark Times. Never mind that I tell my class
to question the good vs. evil binary of light and
dark imagery. [Insert query here about the Persian
origin of the term Manichean dualism.] Never mind
that I am now, finally, post-menopausal. That my
children tower like stony obelisks crowding
my path, deaf to my speech, sharpening their
lofty points. Or that, like eclipses, they spit out
fire and ash, burning and cooling in unpredictable
orbit. [Perfect metaphor eludes me.] Never mind
that today what we knew would happen, happened.
The overturning. The unvoicing. There are days
when I wish I had made a different choice.
Days when I wish I had made different choice–
a different difference in my children’s lives–I write
poems like “Self-Portrait as Half-Dead Mole Pulling
Herself Across the Grass.” Or I binge a Danish drama
in which the first woman Statsminister can’t manage
her own son. How far have we really come? [In 8th
grade, code-name ‘Lizzy’ from Planned Parenthood
posed a clear plastic vagina on the teacher’s desk,
squirted jelly into a rubber cup, folded it like a taco,
and gently slid it up inside.] The son runs away to free
a truckload of pigs from slaughter. Disoriented, they
martyr their bodies back into the road. [It shocked us
to see the fillable cavity mirrored there.] As if choosing
whether, when, and where were all that matters.
Chicago in the 21st Century
i’m looking out the window / it is an office window / so I am working / it is my
office and not / my office / across the asphalt canyon / the canyon that empties
into water / the water is in the shape we call a lake / across the canyon beyond
my window / the window of this office / two people are inside a room on ladders
/ they are standing on ladders but / moving their arms up and down / painting
or priming or sanding or / perhaps in the old days / gluing wallpaper / it’s like
/ is it? / katherine porter looking out her / manhattan window / thinking about
the atom bomb / while watching a man / across the asphalt canyon / the canyon
that empties into water / in the shape we call a river / across the canyon beyond
her window / the man she is watching is / standing on the floor but / moving
his arms forward and backward across a table / a table he is making beautiful /
by his work / and she wonders why / if they will only hide under it / when the
bomb hits / and I wonder why / i am working here / or why we name the shape
of water / or name the shape of work / my fingers are flexing up and down / only
to notice that / what we call the bomb / is always / changing shape / the board
game pandemic used to teach kids / how to take turns / like monopoly / and the
cold war now sounds so / histrionic / this is not my office / this is not my office /
this is not my office / it never was
Lifting Child from the Ground, Turning Around
“Females & Children” Stop Motion Plates
Eadweard Muybridge, 1887
At Colectivo, I had a cranberry-pumpkin muffin.
You’ve never been there. It opened
after you were gone.
I couldn’t get your child to eat—forgive me—
but she had a matcha-latte. Iced.
You should see these
photographs. I’m obsessed with invisible
locomotion, stopping
time, one hundred and fifty years ago,
give or take. That means three
of your lifetimes, give
or take. We talked about why we love
flash-fiction, to peer into
things the smaller
they are. Remember
Magic-8-Balls? Viewfinders?
Mood rings? You might
have debated us, cited skyscrapers.
King Kong. You’re wrong.
The shorter a person’s life, the more we lose.
Call it grief-scale.
*
But the “Females & Children” plates
piss me off. Pages and pages
of nude women
and children—WTF, right?!
Your child’s hair is long now. Still naturally red.
She stopped biting her nails.
Each frame, a postage stamp.
Women and children doing what women and children
were supposed to do. Walking, hand engaged
in knitting. Walking, flirting a fan.
Driver’s Ed. Gymnastics.
Walking the dog.
Sleeping In. Music festivals. Thrift stores.
Walking, scattering flowers.
Opening a parasol and
turning around. Eating again.
Lifting a doll. Getting clean.
Do you know—
*
her wrists don’t hurt
as much as they used to—
why I’m obsessed?
Because we all believe in
invisible motion now, but there were
atheists then,
willing to bet against Physics because
they didn’t understand
its laws. Jumping
from stone to stone across a brook. Running
with skipping rope. Hopping
on left foot. We talked
about introversion. About being
pseudo-extroverts
(we get so tired). Or possibly,
ambiverts (we don’t always get tired).
We talked about
the invisibility of grief.
*
How it makes you want to sleep.
Well, not you.
Us.
Stepping up on a trestle; jumping down, turning.
You were the only true extrovert.
Through the window,
I looked down the block to where they have re-modeled
Fountain Square. You should see it!
There are pastel tables and chairs bolted
to the middle of the street. And I see a woman
lifting a child from the ground,
turning around—don’t worry. Your child
is strong. She is careful.
But not too careful. Stepping up on
and over a rock,
a basket on head, right hand raised.
Even when she knocked her tea on the floor,
it landed right side up
and nothing had
spilled out of
the hole.
Virginia Bell won a Chapter One Competition, sponsored by Arch St. Press in 2021, won the Creative Nonfiction Prize from NELLE in 2020, and received Honorable Mention in the RiverSedge 2019 Poetry Prize, judged by José Antonio Rodríguez. Bell’s poems, essays, and reviews have also appeared in Hypertext, Kettle Blue Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Rogue Agent, Gargoyle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Keats Letters Project, Blue Fifth Review, Wicked Alice, Cider Press Review, and Voltage Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. Bell is the author of the poetry collection From the Belly (Sibling Rivalry Press) and serves as Co-Editor of RHINO. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and teaches at Loyola University Chicago.
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