Jennie Ray Bell

one poem

CHAPTER VI | IN WHICH YOU WOULD THINK

you think “it is debauched to chew the drab and lumpy thing” “the bedraggled process is uncalled-for” and then frankly “to feast upon or grind with teeth is highly untidy”

and then you go largely operose because “scuzziness should not be positively unavoidable” “my morose solar plexus is wayward”

but then at long last you intend to brunt the mousy swill in but thereupon your vocal bands
begin to gag the cinereal pile and your throat folds are ob longing to forbid the thing

and your organ cavity is pushing to outspread its resistive parasol because you

had a sudden intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential
meaning . other people don’t accept what you figure out and

you think movingly about what it .i.s you think feelingly about ingestion what it is
you are sad

and then you think about digestion flat out then you are down

you are voluntarily transmitting things that disseminate . into you and how do you feel and then you breathe out heavily

in severe upset or pain because your orifice wants to disgorge it you let it
you are shiftless in this mush and think you’re gonna get pica

and think about the slovenly tarnish it’s dregging over your teeth
and then you’ll get disconsolate because ya gotta let it get in ya
.no.. you have to yourself muscularly duress something down into what is you

and the ration has gotten now to the standing where it has shaded over and desiccant

you think “the food can bring on a poor spell” and “the food could have extraneous food poisoning” “the food may not be accordingly browned” and “the food is unkempt” and “the food might nourish a malaise”

and you have to sit down and look at the bitter dose and think about it and you have to go to your room and lie down

Jennie Ray Bell was raised on a dairy farm in a small town in New York. She received her MFA in poetry from Cornell University and has taught Creative Writing there. She was also an assistant editor for Cornell’s literary magazine, Epoch. Her work has appeared in Harpur Palate, VOLT, DIAGRAM, DecomP magazinE, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2011 Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize, chosen by judge C. S. Giscombe. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children, and teaches Creative Writing in the online environment.