Francesca Bell – After
After Once the body was wrenched whole from my body I deflated sank back into being ordinary a vessel returned purposeless to its shelf I hadn’t known until first the father and then the son swelled to fill my emptiness that I was a space a lack that walked through the world or danced or […]
Francesca Bell – Lightning Coming Closer All the Time
Lightning Coming Closer All the Time I can’t tell from here if the Lord is a sniper or a drunk guy with a shotgun. Whether He’s poised with His scalpel and scrubs or just reaching into His pickup for a hacksaw. I see my neighbor, raising a girl my daughter’s age, check into the hospital […]
Francesca Bell – Two Poems
Lessons My daughter dreads middle school science because all they study is cataclysm, end-stopped species after end-stopped species, earth’s slow dwindling. There is no longer a world to study that teems with life, not a globe ecstatic in its wild spinning. Day after day, they regard the crumbling edge, broken asphalt where a road runs […]
Francesca Bell’s Bright Stain, Reviewed by Cindy Hochman
Francesca Bell Bright Stain Red Hen Press Reviewer: Cindy Hochman The first poem in Francesca Bell’s sophisticated and street-wise collection Bright Stain begins, like any coming-of-age story worth its salt, with reluctant innocence. Little mouse, lying white on your side like a child in a christening dress— … but snake isn’t interested. … refusing to […]
