TRIGGER WARNING: ALLUSION TO DEATH CADENCE A casualty of confinement, of a heart pushed beyond the limits of disappointment-- the cracks in the form of two brothers swept into an insurmountable tide. Natural causes can mean anything, can be how a body will give up after it can no longer withstand the battering of a hurricane that will not leave to die at sea. What is left is an unwinnable crying game, an echo, the stillness found in solitude—the pleas unanswered. - A PERFECT AND NECESSARY DARKNESS Vanishing is a learned skill, like carpentry or iron work, and this body is a house with the lights turned off, with the power at a crawl. Eyes are bloodshot maps that lead to a flooded peninsula—land mass being swallowed by an unforgiving sea. There will be bows in front of a black curtain, a collapse and a shattering—shards that scatter and blend into soil. A room floods with ghost stories. Kendall A. Bell's poetry has been most recently published in Crepe & Penn and Pink Plastic House. He was nominated for Sundress Publications' Best of the Net collection in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018. He is the author of two full length collections, "The Roads Don't Love You" (2018) and "the forced hush of quiet" (2019), and 28 chapbooks, the latest being "woodvale." He is the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press and editor and founder of Chantarelle's Notebook. His chapbooks are available through Maverick Duck Press. He lives in Southern New Jersey.
|