Allison Field Bell
The Other Side of Mania
There in the bed with the three pillows and the two blankets and under the blankets is her body alive and breathing and she can’t get out of bed with the too-bright light and the slate of blue sky and she hears her alarm and its escalating urgency and downstairs is her lover cooking eggs and toast with a thin pat of butter and she knows this because this is every morning and the scatter of clothes on the floor and the empty whiskey glasses on the window ledge and every morning she’s in bed not wanting to breathe again.
Sometimes You Can’t Call It What It Is
Two piles of clothing on the tile floor. Two bodies intertwined in a bed. An orgasm. An orgasm. A conversation. A man confessing. A woman angry. The woman saying, fuck you, and fuck off. The woman redressing. The woman trying to leave the house alone. The man yelling. His tall, strong body. Her back against a wall. An actual wall. His hands around her wrists. Both wrists. Both hands. The purpling. The man and the woman. Their voice pitched. The woman freed. The woman with her skin raw. The woman running away. A woman running.
Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer from California. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature and an MFA from New Mexico State University. Allison is the author of two collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, forthcoming from Red Hen Press) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, forthcoming from Chestnut Review Books), Without Woman or Body (Poetry, Finishing Line Press), and Edge of the Sea (Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.
Banner Art:
Linde Martin, The Fight, 1997, WikiArt
