Two Stories
Aunt Marjorie
Aunt Marjorie is a fat cow with hair in the shape of a Nazi helmet. I love Aunt Marjorie. Aunt Marjorie's hands take target practice up our spines. We giggle and she says don't tell anyone about this. Aunt Marjorie gives me a handshake and says my eyes look like the bellies of horseflies.
In the other room, I hear my brother Devon shaking and crying. His head is hitting the floor. Devon is a baby says Aunt Marjorie and I believe her. I think I love Aunt Marjorie, but she frightens me sometimes, for kicks. Once, she told me that my father had purple bones underneath his face from all the times my grandmother had beaten him. I remember dreaming and dreaming of those sharp plum bones, they would then spread open from him like flowers or wings and I would run away. You know how it is in those sorts of dreams - you just never can get far enough away from something like that.
Aunt Marjorie, I think I love her, as she takes me behind the tub on wash day and washes my dirty violent parts. She says, don't tell anyone about this and cries and cries like she has no shame, or perhaps, too much of it. Aunt Marjorie's gut reminds me of fish and old maps and animal fur. She says, love is like this. Don't tell anyone. I am confused by this and angry at her bad armor. But I love Aunt Marjorie, the dark shallow water in her eyes, the scent of sycamore leaves in her old hair. I love Aunt Marjorie, mostly in the closet in my bedroom, where she says, don't tell anyone about this and I don't tell anyone about this, except once I told my mother, told her in the way you would talk about new green soap or the toes in your sandals.
Aunt Marjorie is crying in the kitchen today, I love her. Devon is crying in the kitchen, my mother is crying in the kitchen and I can see everyone putting their heads together in prayer or to push out what is in one head into all the others. Today Marjorie came out of the kitchen and said that I didn't exist anymore.
I love the way the flowers on the cherry tree outside make my hair seem brighter than it is and more real. Aunt Marjorie said that even there I didn't exist anymore. It is ten years later and I don't think she ever wanted me to tell anyone that.
1999 – The Year I Was Published In A Professional Biochemical Journal And Everyone Refused To Believe I Had Been Raped
Converting Wet Biomass To Methane
How sad your face was when you pressed it to mine. How much like Kosovo, how frail, the way you asked me about the scent of a ghost. We cast each other in granite, the radon goes from hand to hand, head to head, ovaries to heart. You tell me to write 52 poems about each place we will attempt suicide. I have attempted suicide only once so far.
I am twenty five years old, hiding in the bathroom on the second floor, M-4 in my hands, listening to the rapist leaving, closing the front door, M-4 in my hands and I never used it and I know why.
*
Cell Walls
To be saved you must know someone who will take pity on you. The Germans overtake the Japanese troops. How sad your face was when you signed your cousin's death certificate. Everyone's face looks like someone you have seen before.
We drove to Phoenix and picked up an old axle, the weight of it as we lifted made me sing God bless America. The United States has more war planes than the USSR. There is a song on the radio, some girl sings it will never be beautiful. How sad your face was when you relinquished more soldiers.
This is the moment in which everyone believes in God, headfirst in a ditch, Israel exploding around their tops like a wildflower.
*
Historically, A Large Proportion Of The Volatile Solids In Biomass Are Not Degraded
We sit Shi'vah, the next night, for the way we used to be in love. It is no longer a question of whether we can live our lives like this, butwhether we can curl on top of each other, old wet towels by the bedside.
*
Gas-liquid Equilibrium
We make something out of ourselves by leaving hickey-sucks on our skin, as though to be a tagged dove means anything.
*
Pressure Swing Design
Jesus clutches each Christmas Carol in a different way. Jesus holds us like sad-eyed creatures. Jesus is only slightly worse off than you. Only slightly. Jesus lifts his eyes and Poland is created. You receive a Fulbright Scholarship. You lose it, smash holes in your front door frame, smash tourism, Das Kapital, smash a little dog and cat and a radio-controlled hat. Your hair looks like a missile silo.
Jesus goes to sleep. Jesus is surprised you ended up so ugly. Jesus shucks his clothes like fresh corn skin. You gave up on rivers years ago.
Jesus attempts suicide. You find that inspiring. You find that brave. You keep Jesus as a pet. You keep your mouth shut, for the most part, except when Jesus wakes up, holds your head in his hands. Your face is pressed to the floor, what sadness. Jesus says o ye of little faith. O ye carving your sadness into toilet bowls. Hiding in the bathroom. Jesus flows into the pipes like shit. How sad you are to sit there, holding an M-4, refusing to move.
*
Plasticization Via Applied High Pressure
I walked into the courtroom fist-first. How sad his face was, risking it for just a moment, walking into my daughter's bedroom your wife's bedroom, girls and boys, boys and girls, iced tea sweeter than each long nose and short chin. Everyone cries. Everyone always cries.
I remember being asked if I knew what rain sounded like on a tin roof. That is what it sounded like, though I had never heardit before. A single shot .22, the ghosts rising, the scent of flare guns sitting like brave soldiers in the road.
*
Disposal Methods Of Animal And Municipal Wastes
My name is Heather.
You cannot be a strong swimmer with your ankles tied.
My name is Heather. Look at me. Heather.
*
See this, the shape of a harpoon on my chest. See this, whale bones holding me up. Watch as open my legs slowly, as Jews still do years later.
Each breast is a breast of a Guyana-woman. Each time you said you did not believe in ghosts, I asked you to smell the air. Each origin of myth started in your hands, an M-4 cradled, letting everyone get away with something.
911is returning your call and you are wondering if an emergency can stay an emergency, even years later.
Heather Bell (nee Schimel) graduated in 2005 from Oswego State University in Oswego, NY. Since, she has been published in Mannequin Envy, From East to West: BiCoastal Verse, Empowerment4Women, Ditch, ReadThis Magazine, and Pomegranate, to name only a few. She has also released two books of poetry, one available from Verve Bath Press, (Nothing Unrequited Here), one available directly from the author (How To Make People Love You) and has a forthcoming chapbook to be released in February 2009 by Paperhero Press. She spends her time polishing boots, gardening, painting and looking brightly at all raw stars. Heather dedicates all her writing to JNB. Without him, she never would have written any of it down.