Heather Bell

October 5, 2023

“Umbrella” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

UMBRELLA

my first job was at a burger joint
I spent a lot of time washing trays with bleach
rubbing the corners

whipping clipped fingernails
into the trash basket

I ended up in the emergency room thinking
about my dress that opened at the hem like
an umbrella and how
I had not worn it in
months

I was only sixteen and that bleach
had burned off all my fingerprints

A nurse
in a whisper
asked me if I had been doing anything
strange with my hands

The lining of that umbrella skirt was
a strange pattern that always reminded
me of lungs
like it was saying

this is the skirt that will keep you breathing
and the more I didn’t wear it
the more bleach I would dump
into the industrial sinks

until it was one big vat of toxic
fire until every time I entered 
a room there wasn’t a quietness
for the dying and

I said no I just don’t know how this could have happened
any of it 
and there was a hush to the room like something deadly
sitting down like an osprey maybe or
father and I got up to leave thinking that the 

doorknob couldn’t be dusted by police to find me
I could go
I could do anything

—from Kill the Dogs
2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize Selection

__________

Heather Bell: “Once upon a time there was a six-foot-tall woman with blue hair and a sense of smallness. In her house was a teacup saying ‘girl, you got this!’ and on her wall was a kitten hanging from a clothesline. The kitten’s word balloon said something like, ‘Hang in there!’ or ‘Don’t let go!’ Always something with an exclamation mark. Isn’t that the moral of the story, always? There is always a small woman, hiding her grandness, trying to fill up on uplifting wordplay. But today, this small woman sits down and writes a poem in which she details her smallness and why she came to be that way. Another small woman reads it, and from the tip of her hair a fire starts, but just as quickly dies. Isn’t that why we are here? To write another poem for a small woman to read, and then another. Until the amount of sparks are too much for the quick extinguishing, and she is a woman on fire, exploding into the world.”

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January 21, 2023

“Love Letter to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

LOVE LETTER TO THE GULF COAST OIL SPILL

The photos taken from helicopters are really
quite beautiful: the weird orange waves, the way
it bends back like a spinal cord. It isn’t that I
am not sympathetic to the ocean, but it
touches the tips of birds, taking them from
naked to casket. I have always been attracted

to power in that way: fortressing my house
with brick fences and mines. The abusive
burn victims as boyfriends. Building a garden
all spring, only to maniacally cover it in poison
at the season’s end.

I wonder how the oil sounds when it speaks.
Perhaps quiet as a star. Perhaps sad as a
Wurlitzer. Perhaps it just wants to go home,
moans and cries for its mother. Maybe it is

not what it seems: its dark marigold is
its way of saying don’t leave me because
of who I am. And animals are dying and
the algae has crumbled up in the shape
and color of human blood. I find, within all the
salvage and darkness, that it has fingers.

I touch them lightly like I would
touch the skeleton of a person that I
once loved, frightened and hoping
this one doesn’t belong to me, but
it does.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

__________

Heather Bell: “It’s not that current events were ever something I wanted to dwell on, but I got to thinking about all the news articles out there with their sad lines and accusatory photos and I just wanted to stop all of it, right there. Is it wrong to see a deadly thing as beautiful? Maybe that was my point all along—poetry is like that: a news article gone awry that you and only you can rewrite to help someone get through it all, stop crying, begin taking his or her child to the grocery store again and just, in general, wake up.” (web)

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March 7, 2022

“This Is How I Make My Money” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

THIS IS HOW I MAKE MY MONEY

Every time a possible employer called me 
in response to a resume I had submitted, they 
would awkwardly ask, “and when are you available 
for an interview?” And I had to 
casually say back, “oh, anytime,” as if it was
No Big Deal. You see, No Big Deal behavior is 

actually similar to a duck walking splay-legged
to the edge of a pond. Oh, I’ll get there,
and I will desperately pretend I can walk normally 

the whole way. At this point I had been unemployed 
for 4 months. I had periodically begged, stripped 
and even gotten embroiled in a weird business attempt 
with a covert religious fanatic. No Big Deal 

had become harder and harder to muster. 
I once had been so out of my mind with hunger 
that I had laughed and under my breath said 

I WANT TO DIE when the phone interviewer asked me 
what my qualifications were. I had hummed and 
growled and lost track of words while 
talking about my useless degrees. 

The night after the last growl, I began
the process to trademark No Big Deal.
Because nine out of ten people in my
city lived in poverty. Because even the county 
office had no charity shoes left for me 
and I had been poking around barefoot. 

The day I patented No Big Deal, I got a phone call 
from a lawyer saying, “hey son, I saw your idea,
let’s talk.” And I barked and growled, 

I had no more use for human sounds. 
But No Big Deal flew off the shelves,
people recognized it right away like a 
memory. A woman in a store used 

No Big Deal when she smiled at me,
slipped the rubbery new shoes on my 
feet. I began to speak again, and again, at shows 
and then arenas. “No Big Deal,” I said 
into a microphone and the crowd 

roared back at me, years of nostalgia 
bubbling up. But they wanted to buy it,
they wanted to hold No Big Deal in their 
hands all wrapped up, like it was new.

“How are you feeling?” asked the 
big-headed woman on the television show
and I relaxed backward in the velvet chair,
making sure to show my wrists and the big 
watch there. “No Big Deal,” I repeated 

and she nodded and the audience nodded 
and I wondered what I had done. 

—from Rattle #74, Winter 2021
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

__________

Heather Bell: “I am a six-foot-tall white-haired monster. There are exactly 31 jars in my home. Inside these jars are bones. I write not often at all, because writing is dangerous. I have children and these children are also monsters. But because monsters are what will lead us, this is completely fine. Hello. This is what a monster tells you: hello. Keep reading.”

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December 9, 2019

“Crayola Has a Contest to Name Its New Color Blue” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

CRAYOLA HAS A CONTEST TO NAME ITS NEW COLOR BLUE

Varicose veins after birth. Your hands
during cancer. My unyielding legs
during the rape. The beer I dream of.
The joy I dream of. The sky when you
said yes, oh yes, I do have
cancer. And then you said please

leave me. Leave Me: a good name
for the color blue. Selling my handguns,
suicidal thoughts. Eating white rice,
too sad to make anything different.

Leave Me: a perfect name for the color
blue. Arrhythmia. Seizures. The long
slow terror of a heart rate monitor.
The way I casually whispered

Crayola has a contest about a new
color and you knew it was blue even
before I said it. You Knew It Was Blue:
a good name for a color. Because blue

is sadness but also the most relaxing
color to paint your walls. Research says.
A doctor walks in and we joke, blue jokes,
nothing off limits. The doctor says

a good name for the color blue
could be Flatline and I look at my shoes,
blue laces. It’s Not Funny: an interesting
name for the color blue. Please Don’t

Go: a terrible name for the color blue.
But that’s what you suggested
so we all laughed and I emailed
Crayola while crying and

I feel like there is lightning in my hands
to make a suggestion like that,
like the burning smell of death.

You said isn’t it funny how
veins look blue under your skin
but the blood is red when released
Isn’t It Funny: a name for the color blue.
The coldness of your feet
after you’re gone. Your eyelids.
The weird crust around your
mouth. The hospital bill, my pen,
throwing my purse at the doctor

saying why couldn’t you have
done anything more. All good names
for the color blue. A medium blue,
like Neptune, you said. Just look
up, it helps to look up. You Laughed:

a name for the color blue, a real
winner I think. The release of a heart
from another heart: just perfect.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019

__________

Heather Bell: “Once upon a time there was a six-foot-tall woman with blue hair and a sense of smallness. In her house was a teacup saying ‘girl, you got this!’ and on her wall was a kitten hanging from a clothesline. The kitten’s word balloon said something like, ‘Hang in there!’ or ‘Don’t let go!’ Always something with an exclamation mark. Isn’t that the moral of the story, always? There is always a small woman, hiding her grandness, trying to fill up on uplifting wordplay. But today, this small woman sits down and writes a poem in which she details her smallness and why she came to be that way. Another small woman reads it, and from the tip of her hair a fire starts, but just as quickly dies. Isn’t that why we are here? To write another poem for a small woman to read, and then another. Until the amount of sparks are too much for the quick extinguishing, and she is a woman on fire, exploding into the world.”

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November 26, 2018

“Sad Song” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

SAD SONG

After the eighth cup of cheap coffee,
you sit with me at the kitchen table and I
never know what to say. Because in daylight,
I am frightened, the way the
sun catches your face making your eyes
seem lighter

moon jellyfish
or Glaucus atlanticus—
strange blue dragons

So here is what I should have said
yesterday: mayflies have the shortest lifespan
of any organism but still
they keep finding each other. The Tiger
Pistol Shrimp makes

a shrill sad song

in order to stun its prey.
These are facts

you mouthy sonofabitch
shut up and let me love you

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

__________

Heather Bell: “It’s a funny thing watching a decade long marriage fall apart. We all do what we can. We find comfort where we can. These poems are for Dan, thanks for holding your arms out when I was barreling toward the sun. Love poems were impossible until I met you.” (web)

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November 23, 2018

“Love Poem” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

LOVE POEM

When I think of you
I think of the Cassowary, known to
kill humans with blows from its dagger-like
feet. A bird, but a bird that chooses
to say no instead of run away. And at night
while you sleep you press your leg
to my leg, no matter how far I move away,

moving because of your heat,
my terror. The only thing that frightens me is

your absence, you going away,
instead of pinning me down
and saying no no.

This is the poem where I admit I love you,
am in love with your dangerous hands
at my neck, your scent of

wild and cigars and the moment from anger
to not. I love you as you sleep
delicate snores. I love you as you
drink black coffee and I want to touch you
but always am too frightened. I love you
as you sit outside smoking
 
and the sky looks like
it is touching you, the cloth of it,
a delicate towel. But the thing about
 
dangerous birds is that they protect their own.
I press my foot to yours while you sleep and you
sigh as though
you had been waiting for it.

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

__________

Heather Bell: “It’s a funny thing watching a decade long marriage fall apart. We all do what we can. We find comfort where we can. These poems are for Dan, thanks for holding your arms out when I was barreling toward the sun. Love poems were impossible until I met you.” (web)

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July 18, 2017

“Have You Forgotten” by Heather BellPosted by

Heather Bell

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN

Have you forgotten
the bowl of fish that you left
in the refrigerator last year and how long

you waited for me to gut and scale?
Two weeks, maybe, until it started to stink

and the fins curled over like
a woman’s eyelid
closing. It has always been what I did not do

instead of what I did, which is:

going to the field behind
our house to watch

a young woman be raped. We like to think

that in such a situation that we

would become made of wild boar to charge in

but I am a woman too and

I walked home quietly
with my eyes only open to a slit,

like the size of two small wounds
like the size of sharp small stones
that are pushed by waves over sea glass

shaping it.

—from Kill the Dogs
2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize Selection

__________

Heather Bell: “Once upon a time there was a six-foot-tall woman with blue hair and a sense of smallness. In her house was a teacup saying ‘girl, you got this!’ and on her wall was a kitten hanging from a clothesline. The kitten’s word balloon said something like, ‘Hang in there!’ or ‘Don’t let go!’ Always something with an exclamation mark. Isn’t that the moral of the story, always? There is always a small woman, hiding her grandness, trying to fill up on uplifting wordplay. But today, this small woman sits down and writes a poem in which she details her smallness and why she came to be that way. Another small woman reads it, and from the tip of her hair a fire starts, but just as quickly dies. Isn’t that why we are here? To write another poem for a small woman to read, and then another. Until the amount of sparks are too much for the quick extinguishing, and she is a woman on fire, exploding into the world.”

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