{"id":4659,"date":"2014-02-21T20:11:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T20:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/?p=4659"},"modified":"2014-02-21T20:11:54","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T20:11:54","slug":"matt-bell-5-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2014\/02\/21\/matt-bell-5-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Poems || Matt Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE BEAST SPEAKS<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The heart trembles before what the heart wants<\/p>\n

and what the heart wants is answers. To be<\/p>\n

loved is not enough. The temporariness of surfaces.<\/p>\n

A gross familiarity of shapes. They crave assurances<\/p>\n

of hidden worth. Are promises kept in an apron<\/p>\n

or in the fur of his paws. It is never enough<\/p>\n

to be only beautiful because some beauty is cruel<\/p>\n

or masked or imagined. A tale to tell yourself.<\/p>\n

The flesh of the lover is covered in fur. Clawed<\/p>\n

and horned. Riven with lice. She seeks<\/p>\n

the changeable man, pledges to bring him<\/p>\n

into the light. As if a bath undoes the beast.<\/p>\n

The scrub brush of the lover putting a shine<\/p>\n

on a dull stone. Dress me in a suit, take me<\/p>\n

in a long car to your father’s ball. See<\/p>\n

if you can stop me even once from feasting<\/p>\n

with dirt on my hands. Convince yourself<\/p>\n

that this is love, if you need love so much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


A BLOTCH, A WHIRL, A TALE TO TELL<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Every tale embarked with a sketch or else<\/p>\n

a scrawl. A mark of the pen across the page,<\/p>\n

ascending black ink revealing a red hood<\/p>\n

or else a poison apple or else golden hair<\/p>\n

tumbling from a tower. The pen leaves<\/p>\n

blotches of ink in the corner of words,<\/p>\n

makes too permanent a period. Stop.<\/p>\n

Often it is enough to merely suggest.<\/p>\n

When the teller of tales lifts the pen<\/p>\n

from off the page, the world disappears.<\/p>\n

A wolf cut off in mid-howl, a prince<\/p>\n

who will never penetrate the bower<\/p>\n

of briars. Everything is fragmentary.<\/p>\n

You draw the pages so close you can smell<\/p>\n

the ink. Inside every blotch is another story,<\/p>\n

inside every whorl is a world, but not<\/p>\n

for you. The tale refuses your invitation<\/p>\n

to leave the page. All the rest of your life<\/p>\n

remaining to be lived within the residual,<\/p>\n

whatever lingers after the woodsman.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PRISONERS ALL<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beauty matters, despite or in spite the blood<\/p>\n

and the knives. In a fairy tale it helps to be fair.<\/p>\n

It helps to be lovely. A girl in a tale wins<\/p>\n

not by good works alone, not only the forever<\/p>\n

present of the domestic. There are flowers<\/p>\n

in the forest. They speak in glamours<\/p>\n

and warnings. There are wolves in the woods.<\/p>\n

It is easy to be blinded by warm sunlight<\/p>\n

dappling in the groves. The frogs are princes,<\/p>\n

the princes ogres and trolls. What difference<\/p>\n

does it make. It is only slightly more difficult<\/p>\n

to discriminate between a heel made of glass<\/p>\n

and a shackle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HUNGER<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When she wants meat,<\/p>\n

meat. When she wants blood,<\/p>\n

blood. When she craves to taste<\/p>\n

the yellow curd of marrow,<\/p>\n

she snaps a rib in half, licks<\/p>\n

amidst the splinters. No more delay<\/p>\n

between the wanting and the having,<\/p>\n

the being given.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At last an end to abjection<\/p>\n

in the belly of a wolf.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And isn’t this also love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DREAM WITH END<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A woman who never touches a spindle<\/p>\n

might live forever. But Frigg and Freya,<\/p>\n

Artemis and Athena, they could not escape.<\/p>\n

Distaffs and bobbins, threads spun and measured<\/p>\n

and cut and cast down. In Greece some break<\/p>\n

the arms of their statues. Shatter the elbows<\/p>\n

and the throat. Disfigure the genitals.<\/p>\n

In another land folk carve no statues<\/p>\n

for sleeping beauties, nothing lasts<\/p>\n

except the girls themselves: see Briar Rose,<\/p>\n

a body caught in the static. Then a bent knee,<\/p>\n

the sour breath of an unprompted kiss. Time<\/p>\n

begins again. Her death awakens. Its slumber<\/p>\n

ended with hers. Everything and the world<\/p>\n

now lit into passing splendor. No beauty thrills<\/p>\n

without the knowledge of its end. We clutch<\/p>\n

what we will not keep. In her sleeping century<\/p>\n

she had such extraordinary dreams. A field<\/p>\n

of flowers, all thorns, surrounding a tower<\/p>\n

or else a tunnel. An infinity of blooming upon<\/p>\n

blooming, wild colors calling out to a stilled sun.<\/p>\n

Once she believed each rose was a world.<\/p>\n

Now her prince speaks his devotion into the<\/p>\n

waking sameness. Somewhere her new children<\/p>\n

are crying for her breast. Hunger everywhere,<\/p>\n

disease everywhere else. She hears the whirr<\/p>\n

of thread, slowing. She hears a thousand<\/p>\n

thousand blossoms falling from the stem,<\/p>\n

petals rasping into the hibernal dirt.<\/p>\n

Her only world layered in grief. She waits<\/p>\n

to wake, to wake again, wake further.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n

Matt Bell<\/strong> is the author of the novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods<\/strong>. He teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE BEAST SPEAKS   The heart trembles before what the heart wants and what the heart wants is answers. To be loved is not enough. The temporariness of surfaces. A gross familiarity of shapes. They crave assurances of hidden worth. Are promises kept in an apron or in the fur of his paws. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-poetry","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}