Bell, Elana 2021
To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret. Sand turned too quickly to cement and who cares if the builders lose their arms? The musk of smoldered rats on sticks that trailed their tails through tunnels underground. Trickster of light, I walk your cobbled alleys all night long and drink your salt.
– Elana Bell, “Letter to Jerusalem”
Watch Elana Bell’s 2021 reading with Richard Villar at the Chicago Poetry Center:
Elana Bell begins at 5:27 minutes.
What else to call the way the bare branches
I’d bought at the neighborhood bodega
came back to life that winter.
I’d carried them home—dry, wrapped
in paper—stuck them in the square vase,
and, as an afterthought, filled it with water.
– Elana Bell, “Miracle”
Watch Elana Bell read as part of Poets.org’s P.O.P. series:
