Allison Field Bell
Allison Field Bell is originally from northern California but has spent most of her adult life in the desert. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. Her prose appears in SmokeLong Quarterly,The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, West Branch, Epiphany, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Palette Poetry, South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review,The Greensboro Review, Nimrod International Journal, and elsewhere.
Threshold
He pushed her / outside. Or maybe / inside,
he may have / pushed her / inside. / a threshold,
and she / crossed it / cold kitchen tile / snow drift porch.
Splintered wood / sandstone. Indiana / Arizona.
This woman / five stories / up and two rooftops
air between. This / is San Francisco! Wind
fog, the paint / bucket she’ll piss in / later. She’s
back and forth / and drunk / unreasonable.
Indiana, on her / knees in his / kitchen where
last week, he poured / wine, reasonable. Lucky
he isn’t much / a monster. What is a wrist
recolored? Skin stain / wine / bruise
The door is / the threshold, then the skin
is. / If she didn’t have / it, he wouldn’t
bruise it. But, Indiana / in winter: nothing
keeps / its color.
He pushes her / outside: Arizona in a / hallway.
Lucky, / she isn’t much a woman. / Sideways / just a sliver
on a mattress, and / it’s his bed isn’t it? She
is the threshold, then / the air / the roof / the skin.
If she wasn’t / didn’t / he
wouldn’t.
Ketura
I.
Dusk
copper cloaked, acacia
silhouettes. I’m
in my freebox skirt,
cut-sleeve t-shirt. Glass
of arak, mint leaf suspended
above ice. here, now,
the worst worry is animal.
Snake, spider, solifuge.
I wander among rocks,
sipping, watching my
skin go gold.
II.
Just last night,
I had a man here, out
in the desert, at the date palm
roofed mud hut, built
by children. He dragged
a mattress out to
fuck me. Now, in the dust,
alone, I practice saying
no. No thank you, I say
to the warm evening air.
I kick a rock, watch it
stir up a tiny cloud.
III.
Wasn’t even him
I wanted. His girlfriend:
long black hair, laughter
contagious. I didn’t know
how to say that either. How
to think it. She will not
forgive me. She will call
me American slut. American
whore. Bitch. Later
still, she will marry him,
have his two children.
IV.
Right now, alone, I
can hear the military in
their adjacent desert. Distant
crack of weapons. The Negav:
riddled with war.
Stars flicker
to life. Soon the sky will be full
of them. Soon, I will be
back on the kibbutz,
confessing. I will drink
arak with men, smoke
nargila with men. I
will feel the night
change, air cooler,
stars brighter.