Poetry By Jessica Bell

Nicholas_T CC




on monstrosity 

i take a class my last year of college about monstrous texts |||||| the root of monster is terata meaning both monstrous and marvelous, is used in place of words like deformity ||| deviant ||||||  to make a monstrous text you stitch it together, build a body of other bodies, like frankenstein’s monster / my grandmother tried to teach me to sew when i was little ||| she’d hold up needles and run thread through their eyes, stitch together tears in pillow cases and my grandfather’s work shirts, replace buttons | my professor told us that, technically, the bible is a monstrous text made of psalms and teachings ||  monstrare means to teach, to demonstrate || i’m not much for sewing \ made a shitty stuffed elephant once, for my uncle, with pittsburgh steelers fabric because \ that’s \ his team || and i’m / his | niece ||| to make a monstrous text you’ve got to disorder the narrative ||| break it |||||||||||| stitch it together ||| my grandfather was a diabetic \ kind of monster || what is a monster? unpredictable, uncontrollable; || teaches us something about fear ||| i learned fear watching him stick his fingers with needles to measure the insulin in his blood, how much more he needed or how much less ||| a body stitched \ together of little cells, little lives in his blood  ||   we read dracula and i think about the essence of all the bodies in the vampire’s, a monster in a monstrous text |||| eating, consuming // becoming those around him ||| my grandfather ate up my uncle’s innocence as a boy ||| taught him how to drink | mostly jim beam and mountain dew || told him he should fuck and never love ||||| ate up my mother’s /// my brothers’  || my grandmother’s ||||||||  ate up mine





the boiling of urine 

is the first smell to hit the mortician’s nostrils. great,            shallow lakes of yellow, filthy liquid
simmering inside a bowl 
                                 of pelvic bones. you liked to joke about the air freshener in the bathroom    
                                 off the hallway when our family gathered for the holidays. make sure the plug-in is on, i
                don’t wanna be smellin’ that shit, you would say after thanksgiving dinner, your eyes glassy and
                glazed over with marijuana-induced ballerina pink. when your son, my uncle, would come
                strolling out, a bear-paw hand rubbing the roundness of his beer belly you’d roll your eyes,
                mutter aw, hell, under your breath. 

                                i have heard and read of the scent of burnt hair and skin and deep-fried fat, but never
                 of the excrement. 

                                 the piss and shit of a man seem to me like no one else’s business, but i am left        
                                                                  with nothing 

                                                                                  but the horror                 
                                 of knowing a boy i went to high school with, who once grabbed my ass                   in a
                 hallway

                                  between classes,  
                                                                                  who inherited the only funeral home in our hometown from
his father,    
                                                       knows what this by-product of you smells like. let me be clear; i do not envy
him.           it could be said 
                                            that you were full of piss     
                                                                                   and vinegar and used-up               motor oil.         it could be said
                                                                    that in death there was a foulness about you that preceded your
                                                                    bitterness in life. it could even be said that these things were, in some
                                                                    ways, things to love.    


                                                                                                     what i mean to tell you is here i am, on a loveseat,
                                                                    smelling of dog hair and mud, 
                                                                                                                    and wishing,          for all the ways you ground
​                                                                                                      yourself 
                                                                                                                                                      down on every nerve i’ve ever
                                                                                                                                     had
                                                                                                                     i would have rather held myself out                   
                                                                                                      before the boy mortician’s nose 

                                                                                                                                                                        like the traffic guard of
                                                                                                      your dying, 
                                                                                                                     slowing down this life violation; 
                                                                                                                                                     like the water-wrinkled prune
                                                                                                                                     of a child’s extended palm, 

                                                                                                                                                                      fresh from the bowels
                                                                                                                                                     of a white, porcelain tub.

​​


​
Jessica Bell (she/her) is an emerging writer currently living in Southwest Virginia with her partner and their five pets. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and is interested in hybrid forms that explore themes of grief, addiction, and family inheritance. In her free time, she can often be found by the river reading any one of Sarah J. Maas’ fantasy novels.