JOSH BELL
[ A Meditation Concerned With What You Might Be Meditating About, Ramona ]    [ Sleeping With Waitresses ]
[ Love Double-Wide (your love is like a bad tattoo ] 

A Meditation Concerned With What You Might Be Meditating About, Ramona

A picture's worth a thousand worms, Ramona.
The stars are the vestigial nipples of your Lord.
Darling, you have clipped the hedges even thrice
since I parked my shaving kit in your medicine cabinet,
and it's time for us to speak, yet gently, again, about
how very much I mean to you. Mumbledy-peg,
Ramona. Ramona, Ramona, and the sky flung out
above your pointed shoulders like a knapsack
unfastened or a river with the hiccups. Excuse me.
You move through hallways like a water-bug on fire.
You slide down the conversation like guts down
a rooftop. Move the river to fit you. Suck all
nipples on the underbelly closest to your heart.
Fluff the pillows for the skip-tracers of your love
so they'll be comfy while they wait for you
to make good on the bonds you have signed for.
You will find most of this information in books.
You think too much about Roman emperors.
Roman emperors, and their sly corrupted bellies.
I renewed my subscription to American Hand-gunner.
At least I heard your bluebird sing, is a song lyric.
Sometimes I wish I was Catholic, is another.
You're thinking, I left a note inside a ship inside a bottle
for his mother, for when I kill him during
reindeer games and have to flee the country.
You think that's how she'll know to bury me
standing up. I say, I say, height lasts longer than
ambition. Much of what you think doesn't
move me. Much of what you think, you don't
tell me, Ramona, Ramona, you hardly live
in the suburbs in a white house. I have hunted
in the hedgerows for clues to your inner life
and I have hunted big game in your kitchen.
I fucked around and shot the pork roast.
The juvenile pork roast is considered a delicacy
in some regions, was my totally brilliant excuse.
I hate you. You love a spoon and someone else.
The sky's so gorgeous and tubby tonight even
an earthworm could put you on its back, and fly.

– originally published in Verse

 

Sleeping With Waitresses

And I have this pitcher of wretched coffee,
but my waitress doesn't care that I love her
now or whenever I've come stumbling in,
when sleep (it's said) is a figure skater
skating tight white figures across 4am
and the pillows knock like old boxcars
and bald God's own true daylight flirts

creepily on the young knee of the day.
Now some new terror in the sugar bowl.
I'd sleep beneath the eggs, as it were.
I'd frame the house of toast with sausage.
I'd lock out heaven from its dripping
door, pull the pancakes to my chin,
sigh, and make my waitress come in

and get me. Come in, I'd say, and get me.
Please sleep with me if that means sleep.
Later, we'll have our way with the special.
Your knees look cute from this angle.
I say cute, but they make me cry.
My napkin isn't warm enough and I
am in love with how you think I don't

exist, in love with your sweet disdain and
the what looks like it must be a mustard stain
on your sleeve, Cindy. Stay until the walls
get cold. Kiss the furniture from my lips.
Tell me a story that ends with It was all
a dream. I'll tell you one that begins
with a mattress swinging on a meat-hook.

– originally published in Sycamore Review

 

Love Double-Wide (your love is like a bad tattoo)

Your love is like a bad tattoo.
I've done too much time
in this trailer park and I will
burn your double-wide down

except I'm lazy. Your love
is like a bad tattoo although
you put it on the back of my
eye. It starts "Ramona" and I

can't read the rest anymore.
I'm tired but I remember what
it says. Something I won't
repeat is what. I said "love"

but meant a word that sounds
like "trigger" and means
"You're dead." Look it up
if you don't believe me.

Find it near "damn fool"
and "dear god" if there ever
was such a dictionary. And if
there was, you sure already

read it. I studied some Latin
strictly due to you: Semper
fidelis, semper idem, semper
paratus. Always faithful,

ready, and the same. Me or you,
what a question. Anymore
I'm like some Ophelia who took
the other route, fat, drugged,

and gone to seed. Alive though.
Lounging in the wading pool
outside fair Hamlette's double-wide
in my best plastic sunglasses

and checking my periphery as if
epiphanies might have to sneak
right up on the likes of me. I'm in
need of some coy flowers, a cocktail.

Somebody bring my notebook, too.
I'll write one of my patented I didn't
kill myself notes: Hello cruel world
I'm still not leaving again, it's me.

Your love is like a bad tattoo
deep on my superstructure.
What monks scribble on bones
in ossuaries, I imagine. My latest

affectation is pretending you are
a house I'm haunting with my life.
You don't think I'm pretending.
Somebody bring me my hood.

– originally published in Iowa Review

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