One Day, My Body

Francesca Bell
| poetry

 

I’m tethered

since the man

on the ridge,

 

limited to the path

between the backyards

and the cemetery.

 

This body is a rope

that swings me

over want’s abyss.

 

I am weak, succulent,

a magnet for men

who hide in the woods.

 

I knew that trail

like the ridges of

my own body

 

that rose up

and changed

everything.

 

It was my ridge,

the way once

it was my body,

 

when I was

lanky-straight

and invisible,

 

before possibility

unleashed itself,

month by month,

 

inside me. One day,

there was a stranger

on the trail

 

as one day,

my body curved

out of control

 

making men

do things

I regretted.

 

What makes a man

want a woman

dead

 

or pinned,

unmoving,

beneath him?

 

It’s bright here

on the fire road

between gardens

 

and graves.

Vultures perch

on the chimneys,

 

wings spread

to the new day.

A deer’s carcass rests

 

in the creek beyond

the chain link.

I am safe here

 

in the open

among the already

always deceased.

Francesca Bell’s poems and translations appear in many magazines, including ELLE, Mid-American Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, and Rattle. She is the co-translator of Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish’s collection, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019). She lives with her family in Northern California.

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