Josh Bell

Josh Bell was born in 1971 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He attended Indiana State University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was later awarded a postgraduate Paul Engle Fellowship. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, jubilat, Verse, and Volt. Bell’s first book is No Planets Strike (Zoo Press, 2005). He was the 2003-2004 Diane Middlebrook Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Cincinnati.

Poem to Line My Casket with, Ramona

Come practice your whorish gestures in the graveyard, Ramona.

Come sharpen your teeth on the tombstones.

Cough up the roots if you know what’s good for you.

When coyotes are teaching their young to howl,

ghoulies rehearse the Courtship of Wrist-bones.

When you hear clawing at the square of Styrofoam

serving as a window in the caretaker’s shack,

then you must count each step going up to the mausoleum,

and my ghost will appear in the churchyard.

He’ll kiss the back of your knee in the moonlight.

These are not promises, but eerie enough, regardless.

You must count out loud, Ramona, the steps,

because this is the time to watch what eats you.

I used to love the way the wind whistled through your teeth

when you drove the back roads, above your legal limit.

I used to have these poses. They turned into habits.

I used to love the folks that loved me.

And they’ve been sad ones, my years since being dead.

And they’ve been coming, the folks who claim to love me.

And I hardly recognize myself. There aren’t mirrors, as such.

The drum section rattles it out, down by the high school.

I hear them, or is it the caretaker drunk in his wheelbarrow?

You used to play the wheelbarrow, I recall.

You used to wash your underwear in the sink.

Above ground, the wind whistles through the tombstones.

Below ground, the wind sleeps and has colors.

Below ground, colors are how I dream of making my comeback.

There’s a difference between a white dress and the white dress.

You used to strip off the white dress in a highly professional manner.

You used to dangle the remote, and I’d come get it.

You used to skip church. You used to skip dinner parties.

Now you’ve been seen hoisting condoms from the pharmacy.

There are twelve condoms to a pack. A pack of lovers mills outside your door.

A pack of the dead are heading toward the showers.

A pack of dead lovers is referred to as “a creep” of dead lovers.

More than one dead lover is weeping. But oh, how it was me who loved you then.

You with your cracked lips, with your love and your other defilements kept

alive in a bucket.

When I first died, I stole a lock of your hair while you slept.

Now I dip it in ink when the mood strikes,

and the times you visit and kneel so pretty on the grass above me,

that’s not scratching you hear. It’s writing.

Zombie Sunday (Had We but World Enough and Time)

Gentle handed holy father, or whomever,

how I love curling up on the moldy couch

in the vacant lot, across from the skating rink,

where I pretend to hold your hand, in the rain,

and we are queer for each other, are we not?

You’ve dropped, like a lady’s handkerchief, your several hints:

the Bible, for example, which was a gift,

and where you wrote on the inside cover—

like a green schoolgirl—your first name with my last.

Also the flowers, who offer their meager,

vegetable kindness when you are lonely for my voice.

Yet this is no time for the trademark

coyness, when matter is decaying,

when the stars, don’t think I haven’t noticed,

are stuck in clots and barely sparking,

like bad plugs, and the celestial spheres

have ground to a missionary halt.

GHHF, or whomever, you are old enough

to be my mother, or whatever,

and all the old girlfriends are jealous.

You have drowned one world already,

so confident, so tall, yet when lightning flashes,

I have to think, it is your knees that crack.

Baby, what are you waiting for?

I see how you look at me, across rooms,

like I’m just the kind of firmament

you could really cast some light onto,

and with those knees, like two greased moons

in glass sacks, if you fell to them,

and asked, how could I say no?

The very rivers would double back

to their invisible mothers and the mountains

would cross their legs and squirm.

So loosen the bald hinges of the universe

and step down through the canopy.

Come over here and tell me who you like.

Come sit in the back row during Algebra class

and let’s see the skin that time forgot,

let’s do the math, let’s knock the handle

off the moon, let’s review the tape,

let’s practice your lines, and lord when you left me

I turned in my library card, I shaved

my head and wept for days, the sun

pulsing like a tumor in a bank of cloud

above the pawnshop, inoperable and shy.

Who but me will take you in?

You, who could clean us from the very streets—

between your holy thumb and forefinger—

like so much scum on floss? You have

stricken me, thusly, there-over, from the records

even once. But now I’m going to have

to have those inimitable favors of yours,

a peek across the sizable dowry of time,

and as sordid and easy as you were

in the days of old, with your debutante

sea-splitting and the profligate haunting

of the hedge, if you do come again,

come eagerly, like it was your first time,

and please have the nerve to wear

something abominable and white.

Meditation on The Consolation of Philosophy

And on that final night I tore eye-holes

in a black pillowcase, slipped it over my head,

made love to myself in the mirror,

and couldn’t bring myself to finish.

I’ve begun telling the truth and now

I need objective help. Certain things

I need to do can’t be accomplished

without a circumspect accomplice.

A girlfriend. Back in the good old days

those condemned to death hustled up

cash to tip their executioner; a sharper

blade, a meditated stroke, etc., but the last

woman I bade wear a black pillowcase

while she made love to me didn’t (make

love, wear the hood) even though

I put ten dollars on the night stand

before services rendered. My surrender,

of sorts, to the animal largesse lurking

behind the puzzled genius of the hood,

and who’ll complain if the blade’s on its fifth

neck of the day, or your executioner

shows up drunk? You? “Off with your…

arm. Damn. Here we go.” Look, I’m not

really into that kinky stuff, but a body

requires service. Take Boethius, whom

I haven’t read. He wrote his uplifting

Consolation of Philosophy in prison,

then they cinched a wet leather helmet

on his head, and tossed him to the sun.

I bet when the leather dried, shrank,

cut in, I bet it gave, a bit, as the convict’s

blood got it wet; enough for false hope,

a peek at slack-jawed Romans standing

around with clean hands. Boethius

got lucky. I mean, he never had a chance

to take it all back, to plead for exile

and promise to burn his manuscripts.

What would the sun say to that? It wouldn’t

be good. You can’t reason with a star,

friend, or the people you put in your will

or your bed. That’s why we give advanced

directives to those who handle our bodies

during the few hopeful seconds they have

call to handle them—sex, hospitalization,

death in beds, closets, coffins, coffee tins

(like your Uncle Mike)—it doesn’t matter:

Someone has to promise that they’ll pull

the plug or man the screws, and then

follow through, no matter how badly,

when the time comes, we want them not to.

Sleeping with Artemis

I hadn’t been that ashamed since

the Spartiate festival of the Hyacinthids,

and it was harder than we thought, sleeping

with Artemis. We brought sandwiches;

she brought arrows and stuck them

fletching up in the sand. We were vastly

unequipped. I looked to the heavens,

like you will, and asked for guidance

and a shield. To no avail. Furthermore,

the wine didn’t help like we thought.

She drank it down, cursed our mothers,

and only got reckless, really, popped

the blister on her heel, drew the bow,

and, with both eyes shut, skewered

Crissippus. We scattered like snacks.

I believe it happened in that clearing

by the stream, where much transpired

as of late: two dead last April—the girl

who smoked flowers—that quiet kid who

turned into bark. We should have known

better, with the storied plants along the bank

and the instructive constellations in the sky.

Then she swept up out of the hedge like

a jack-knifed lion, a moon on each shoulder,

but you read the report. Indeed, sir,

we felt hairless, the offspring of mice,

when she quoted Hemingway, then turned

the forest to her wishes: leaves dropped

like bombs: branches shook: and where

the hounds came from, no one can tell.

From time to time, picking us apart now

from the stream, knee-deep and eyeing

the rushes for movement, she’d glance down

to her shirt, but it was always someone

else’s blood. I remember her teeth

weren’t as straight as you’d think.

But something about her was perfect.