Meuse I
Pron.: /ˈmjuz/
a depression left
in the grass, a shallow
bowl, or profound,
a gap in the hedge
the hog trespassed, in other
words, not the animal
but the space through which
it moved, a river,
the water having graved
out the dirt and stone,
cast a place for itself
to run, helter-skelter
*
or the imprint of the Buddha’s
butt on a mountainside,
the Virgin Mary on toast,
Christ in a snowbank,
in other words, like pareidolia,
Greek for “beyond the image,”
or call it magical thinking,
air-castle, desperation, need
*
from the Middle French for “hiding place”
so, also, the inside shelf above
the closet door, invisible if you didn’t
look straight up upon opening, where
I stashed myself so that I was
always the last one found,
nestled there, I loved listening
to the sound of seeking—pounding feet,
muffled shrieks, and, at last, sighs—
their pretense of giving up
on me, as if I hadn’t performed
this trick a thousand times
*
or how you can also hide
in time, like staying in bed
and pretending to sleep
to avoid saying goodbye
to someone leaving
for another continent
their laughter on the other side
of the wall, leaving impressions
like a hand’s sweaty stain
*
the handprint of a beloved
in cement, finger furrows into
which you—or anyone—
can try to place your own,
palm against where-another-palm-
once-was, so trace
of a pilgrimage, of an ephemeral
immanence, mark
of hoof, of claw, of ball or heel
Meuse II
Pron.: /ˈmjuz/
Panther Hollow,
part of a park
in Pittsburgh,
a valley, or “holler,”
past home of the now
locally extinct wild cats,
pooled with water
in the deep dip between the trees
and long, steep stairs
but which I understood as
hollow panther,
hungry,
or lonely,
its belly translucent
as an Xray
or a sonogram
of a nonviable
blastula
which my mother
witnessed four times
in her life
the hollow panther
of her own body
on a screen,
the ultra-sound of
soon-to-be emptiness,
and so, my sister and I became
DES babies, the impression
diethylstilbestrol
[Pron. / dī-ĕth′əl-stĭl-bĕs′trôl′ /]
or, to speak more plainly,
synthetic estrogen,
left on us:
the risk of clear cell
adenocarcinoma, and that’s
a lot to swallow
*
What was the cure
for panthers
like my mother?
What is it still?
You guessed it.
An evacuation.
A scouring, a raking,
leaving a hollow to be filled
another day—or not—
*
We played in the woods
by the hollow.
Raced on the stairs.
Dared to swim.
Pretended to fish.
Dug for loose change
in the muck. Rubbed sticks
into fire, or tried to. Kept watch
for a sleek form
to move through
the shadows. Later, a girl
I knew in high school
was stalked in the hollow while running.
Caught, pinned, and filled
against her will.
Meuse III
Pron.: /ˈmjuz/
that scarred cleft
under the cliff
of your chin,
where the swing
swung back
that pore
turned pit
after the oil
slicked your
face, that ghost
forest, after fire
or flood, ghost
apple, after pre-
mature frost, ghost
wolf after near
extinction, now
coiled into
coyote DNA,
that way
a grudge
makes a home
circling and
circling, mulish
and mean
it’s in the cup
of my hands
even as I try
for grace
Meuse IV
Pron.: /ˈmjuz/
metaphor for
memory, not the
surface dive
of the short term
but the hippo-
campus-driven
journey to the epi-
sodic, risking
the bends
upon return
to the Present.
Hippocampus, Greek
for “horse”
plus “sea-monster,”
or its gentle
cousin, “seahorse.”
Named concretely
for the shape
of the organ, like
the dress I remember
wearing to my father’s
second wedding,
printed with purple
hippos, rippling
when I moved,
a zoetrope
on my body,
or the red slap
of my mother’s
hand on my face, or,
the grenade
thrown at someone
by my own voice
years later.
Rise carefully
after you go there.
And if you return
too quickly
to the present,
your head spinning
round like an anima-
tronic figure in
a haunted house,
bend back
over, and try
again, find that
bowl of cream
you learned
to whip into sweet
sweet soft butter
Meuse V
Pron.: /ˈmjuz/
metaphor for a hole
in the heart that is, in
the wall between
the ventricles, the prime
pumping chambers, considered
congenital but caused,
most likely, by toxins
ingested by the host
to save its own life
while pregnant, or a hole
in the pipes in the body
of a city, its prime pumping
station subject to
corrosion, corruption,
then everything
sneaks in, the decaying
tunnels seeping their own
lead into themselves
perhaps you’ve read
my friends from Flint
who write about Flint
perhaps, like me, you’ve
booked a flight to L.A.
and haven’t yet read
that the water won’t
be safe to drink after
the wildfires—you’re used
to only worrying about
water in Mexico—perhaps
we will meet in L.A., bottles un-capped,
clink them together
in a dull plastic smack
of sound—
even lead asks us to appreciate
the impression it leaves,
the half-life it once had,
how it dares to trespass.
I’m reminded of the way I leak
into myself
in the best and worst ways—
it takes all I’ve got to decide
which is which
Virginia Bell is the author of the poetry collection Lifting Child from the Ground, Turning Around (Glass Lyre Press 2025) and From the Belly (Sibling Rivalry Press 2012), Virginia Bell won NELLE Magazine’s Nonfiction Prize in 2020 for the personal essay, “Chicken,” and her poetry won Honorable Mention in the 2019 RiverSedge Poetry Prize, judged by José Antonio Rodríguez. Her work has appeared in New City Magazine, Five Points, Denver Quarterly, SWWIM, EAP: The Magazine, Hypertext, The Night Heron Barks, Kettle Blue Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Rogue Agent, Gargoyle, Cider Press Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Nervous Breakdown, The Keats Letters Project, Blue Fifth Review, Voltage Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. Bell is Co-Editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University. Please visit www.virginia-bell.com
Image: Detroit Publishing Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
