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