Iron Writings

the writings of Rebecca Bell. All work posted here is my own.

[springironwritings]

[springironwritings]

Telling in Mountains

Start with the view of a lover’s spine we are dipping planes, how the field rolls green and yellow, without anyone’s asking. And at my old school, there was a perch in the trees above the Hudson, chest of falling. Start with the view of silence skimming off the roof, tinned and hot for summer. Our skin changes, loosens Either we say it or we don’t. I want to be held open like a peach made to tell you who I am but the mountains here are violets from a distance (and you never ask) There is no asking, only telling without words which I can’t accept. Violets are flowers until they are mountains and this means we are still alone (even in view of a lover’s spine)

[springironwritings]

Picked, Catched

I used to dream about our other chances, grains we never ate. The orange of your mind  in this space           where I am at. We meet in various iterations you the fly and me the worm you the acorn, spring, me when the ground grows red and we meet to talk about little things.         My body is hard to navigate, easier for some than others        cilia on legs, arms, to feel what isn’t there. To lie in bed and not talk is both the best and worst thing.          It is grainy it is wood stuck to a tongue.            It is cream gone cold it is a child’s song I can’t make heads or tails of.         What are you thinking I won’t say because            I used to dream the best iteration of us         one hand spread  the storm between its fingers.

            Catch, you might say. I flex my hands

I will not

[springironwritings]

Dried in drawers we take our fields down river. She has grown and so have I. Like a child I miss my mother and my old school.

In her drawer are wild flowers lilacked from waiting. We don’t see eachother but the train will take us upstate if we want.

[springironwritings]

Excerpt: On Queens

Benches outside the twenty-four hour grocery on forty-sixth-street are where L sits when it gets dark, when she realizes the apartment is too small to fit four women comfortably. Once, she came home at night with mulberries picked fresh from somewhere in our neighborhood and she wouldn’t tell me where she found them until I begged. Now, I know where the mulberries are, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t have the means to scale the tree like the kids do, like L does, to reach for the branches up high that haven’t yet been picked over. L would come home like that often, arms full of berries or bark or flowers arranged in colorful bouquets, later scattered about our apartment, in our bathroom by the sink, by the window looking out onto concrete wall, flowers from our neighbor’s yards living and dying in our apartment.

[springironwritings]

Maybe you’ll go to Venice

            My father woke me in the small hours of night, shuffled my brother and I towards the backseat of his car and just went. We didn’t know where he was taking us but didn’t want to ask. The streets were slicked with rain, traffic lights blurred and blinking, but there was no one else to pass. He barely slowed at each intersection and neither my brother nor I cried in the backseat. Living room far back home, though not so far it was easy to forget. A woman lay dead under her framed painting of Venice beneath the gondolas anchored with no men to row them, and the canals so blue they seemed safe to swim. Of course, they were not safe to swim and people died all the time, especially of cancer, especially in their living rooms under Venetian seascapes.

            It was more difficult if I thought of who this woman had been when she was breathing, my mother, and so instead I leaned from the backseat window, rain on my outstretched hand, and my father up front with no one next to him on the passenger side. In real life, he had hated sitting up front alone, always chastised us kids when we tried to pull one over on him, sitting with our friends instead of him when he drove. “I’m not your chauffeur,” he’d say.

            The woman in the living room had been sick for a very long time. After work as a counselor at an art camp, I’d come visit her with sandwiches. There was never anything much to say. I’d sit by her with my plate poised over her bedside table, florescent lights overhead like too bright stars, a sign they would soon be dying out, as all stars do. I’d sit and I wouldn’t bring anything to do. If she had a headache and couldn’t read, I had a headache and couldn’t read. It didn’t seem fair to flaunt books she’d never finish, knew she’d never finish, in front of her, when I was supposed to be making meaningful conversation.

            I cried two weeks later, out of the car, during the time of day when the traffic light resumed its green, red, and yellow sighs, was not yet tired to the point of blinking. I went to work and when I got out, I realized I had nothing to do, so I opened a book and began to read.

[springironwritings]

Baritone’s Elegy

We walk to the graveyard on a sunny day the grounds by my house, Calvalry. I think of men stately atop equine equals wish I had a horse to feed apples, stable in Queens between the Guatemalan churches and bakeries. I just push a bike instead. Sopronos filmed years ahead before the deaths go again anytime you turn on the television.

We are at the graveyard on a holiday the sun is hot steams the wind as we walk Stones are names stuck to granite like granite sticks to time. A tree would be better; I shouldn’t judge another’s death but don’t spread the ashes just yet

We are at the graveyard on a holiday my mother’s birthday, past tense I still mouth the verbs capped. In my dream, she hasn’t left but when I do, she never said debate the stones so I never did.

We, at the graveyard with a bike death for us, Soprono style, a bush and a plaque for the Baritone man. On my way from Calvalry, I fall they moved the Baritone from Manhattan to Queens dug his body and it sings The scrapes on my knees are roses I kneel at the stone and rest them there. My mother’s birthday is another day,

                  I fall off                   bleed my rose or peonies                   and we’re off                   to the waterfront, to a bar                   where I sit and wait and smile                   for a cab willing to cross the bridge.

[springironwritings]

call for submissions

as I previously mentioned, literary magazine and online community, The Whale, will be going live on July 1st. We’d like to have submissions ready and edited for opening day. I would love to read whatever you’ve got! Email submissions to: [email protected]

and check out the submission page for guidelines:

http://thewhalesings.com/submissions/

[springironwritings]

Dear great ones

One of the reasons why I have been MIA on tumblr (& therefore in life) is because I’ve been working on an exciting literary project with a dear friend of mine. We have been tirelessly interviewing up-and-coming writers, accomplished authors, booty-banging musicians, and youtube-famous weirdos for our debut.

I will be writing a piece of flash fiction every Sunday before and after our launch.

I know you’ve seen thousands of new literary blogs. I know you’re tired of them. But this one may be worth it. It seeks to fill the disconnects our dear internet leaves with its disparate, unfocused, manic nature. It seeks to create a community of those who need to communicate.

I know from experience there are some amazing writers out there on tumblr and I call all of you to submit to THE WHALE. I will be one of the editors and would love to read, edit, and publish your finished work.

The Whale will launch July 1st 2015 and I hope to see you all there.

http://thewhalesings.com

https://www.facebook.com/thewhalesings/info?tab=page_info

xxB

[springironwritings]

Home

I wake in a town so unlike my own; the witching sighs, babies sucking the milk of unknown dialects. A neighbor bathes in quiet peals of piano, sitting pearl where the cat waits, porch-kept for a patch of sleep. Low in me is an ache of completion, language that won’t come quick as I’d like. Water over foot, I leave house and walk without affect, considering windows without shades, a natural rising, where across, whitewashed homes wait, square against sky. Brooklyn expressway proximate, euphonic, its cars lapping against the roads like ocean. I drink a beer and sideline myself, watch the succulents I have named grow. To return home is a wonderful thing where the sun wakes me warm in its process.

[springironwritings]

projection of the hanged man

Sly projection Mud fall slow but I laughed; you ever seen the sky that color? Couldn’t say.

Puppeteer and his gallows. Grassy hill and mess of horses. Your face peaks through.

Why grow hair long if you knew Think about the rope burn and light setting in strips like faulty projection. Gallows. Wrap you in white. I wonder-- who can fit between these stones

[springironwritings]

excerpt (callum)

The lake had been cleansing. Callum could remember his father leading him there by the hand, falling ahead. Michael’s body was so large it blocked the set of sun, the rays eking over his silhouette like a disorganized halo. Callum’s mind was full and blurred and he only saw things passing as his father dragged him. He found himself unable to pull the dulled purples and oranges of the sunset into something complete. But he felt safe. He felt understood with his hand nestled thickly in his father’s. He brimmed with the understanding he no longer had to lead; Michael would take care of everything from here on out. His shirt and face and limbs were sticky with the call and response of the shot, but his father would wash it away.

            When they arrived, the mouth of water spitting against land, Michael turned to his son so they both stopped short, “Take off your clothes,” he said, his face fading to black as the sun fell from the sky. Callum’s back dead white in the dim light. He let his pants drop to his ankles and crouched at the edge of the water. His father helped him up and guided him into the water, black pooling and leering at Callum’s calves. His father, also naked, faded into the darkness of the night air as he cupped water in the cradle of his hand and pulled it, gentle, over his son’s head.

            “What will we do with the body?” Callum asked as his father eased water along the midline of his back.

            “Don’t worry. It’s taken care of,” His father said, his fingers threading through Callum’s hair, combing quick to rid it of sand and viscera nestled in the roots. “You will be okay.” The water cooled his back. Callum believed this statement unequivocally.

            His father’s voice was silver in the water, “You are perfect,” he said, scooping water over the black of his son’s head. “You are good.”

            I am neither, I am both.

[springironwritings]

dead sea

I water my feet without cloth, returning to the Hudson on a lake where the mother insists her daughter swim. Topless, the daughter wades in, turning to her love while the mud piles up and it’s like the red sea. Remembering her own fearlessness, she dives, but refuses to wet her own hair, curls coming undone.

 When I was small, my mother used to sing out the windows of cars, and I would sink until only the top of my head could be seen. No one should know until she ended her song. It was so beautiful even when it wasn’t— the voice sung travels farther than spoken, but

I   didn’t care, just wanted her to finish, quick trees passing. She spread mud over. Her face like the red sea.

Don’t believe my mother is buried under yet I know this as truth. The bit of dirt shoveled over, dead sea mud over her face in the mountains. And the girl in the river could be me, breasts bared between lover and mother, curls undone. Ashamed when her mother smears the mud like war paint.

She spread mud over her face like the dead sea.

[springironwritings]

Melt

I run the bath. Without cold, I’m complacent. Taxonomy of touch; The water laps woolen.

Not since I was seven, the woman who watched would lift me up, my heat withered. She’d braid me in plaits. Taxonomy of hair; The young loom.

Egg sandwich waiting. The yolk leaks. At seven, I don’t know; It could never have been born. Taxonomy of belief; It could have been born.

Since I was seven, I hadn’t bathed. I showered; my searing state. No more woman who watches. I must watch myself.

I pour wool over the children’s heads. I lift them and they cry. Air too skinny I tell them eggs aren’t babies. I feed them and they cry. Babies is melted hide their eyes; remove the yolks.

Without water, complacency. Since age seven, I watched the spray. I eat eggs despite the child, allow hair to tangle without its plaits.

Taxonomy of thought; To the wool over my eyes.

[springironwritings]

old revival

Reject the sweet geometry of knees and fists naked in cold arrival.

She played with her hair but the audience wasn’t her equal in voice or breadth.

 Here, the arrival of a woman born perpetually.

 Often a poet is no such thing.

[springironwritings]

Epistolary

In those moments, when you read yourwords, I could not quit recognizing your voice. The weeks that passed subsequently became seminal moments for my perception of self as a writer. You allowed me to claim the term, asked that I held no reservations for it.  Most of our conversations took place, hunched, in the brightened cast of the many little lights in my room, you in the chair, me on the bed with my legs tucked up to my chin. It was funny when you invited yourself over the first time and I thought who is this brilliant and strange individual who wants to hear me read, why has she asked so specifically that I give my written word voice? I could not stop my body from shivering or my legs from bouncing, as I always do when I meet someone who takes the vague quality of light and makes it precise. There is always the hope that these sparks of recognition will be sustained and that the light might remain clear for as long as need be, but I find that these moments of truth more often take on the ephemeral form of fire and die down through the introduction of daily living to those eternal souls, souls, which cannot bear the way others sometimes speak of weather or schoolwork without acknowledging how bright or dull the quality of light becomes as it falls across a room or empty field.

[springironwritings]

excerpt

Gena Rowlands has the wonderful high-pitched but sultry, grounded voice of the late 60’s and early 70’s. She answers to the name ‘Mabel’ and Peter Falk is a rough and tumble ‘Nick’. Her kids scamper around the backyard, stuffing birthday cake in each other’s faces and letting go of balloons the colors of a fruit bowl. Peter Falk yells a lot; desert rose accentuates the licked-over lips the women at the party wear.  The film’s coloring is saturated in tempered orange and yellows, the hues of old age now forsaken in favor of desiccated cyber-colors like purple and the darkest blue. Think The Matrix, think an actor speaking, in practiced precision, to a green screen. My laptop is about to die. In English class the other day, we saw American Beauty and Mrs. L. taught us about beauty in the ordinary using the plastic bag as evidence for her thesis. Now I must re-watch it, this time taking extensive notes. I didn’t care for the film the first time, but I understood how a plastic bag moved by the wind could be the only proper metaphor to teach a class full of checked-out seniors any appreciation for the mundane. At this period in our lives, we want everything fast and furious, virtual reality, pumped to the brim with stimulus but without the pitfalls of a skinned knee. In this way, we reveled in Mrs. L.’s tales about her past, riveting retellings of Technicolor and black and white and cyber-generated memories when she encountered prostitutes and pimps downtown, how she almost got kidnapped but jumped out of her assailant’s van just in time, her tone both teasing and chiding when we were afraid to use the term ‘masturbation’ to refer to the famous pear tree scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God, her frank appraisal of the sex scenes in movies. “Everybody does it,” she’d say with her arms bowed, her hands on her hips. She stood at the helm of the classroom beneath a freeze frame of two actors kissing, “You just want them to do it realistically. None of this Disney stuff.” For comparison’s sake, she described in great detail a scene from the 1995 drama Kids, the camera focused on two adolescents literally swapping saliva, their braces clashing, lips chapped with confusion, “It’s more like this,” she said with chagrin, “at least at first.”