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  Kay Bell

Going

12/12/2018

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                       for Salvador Dalí's Persistence of Memory

​Artist:  Salvador Dali
b. May 11, 1904, Figueres, Spain; d. January 23, 1989, Figueres, Spain 
Title:  Persistence of Memory
Date: 1931
Click here for more information
​
Picture
 
Time    slaughters     decades
seasons of inertia    bending              faces   packed   with numbers
flexible    efforts   wait   stop     ask:    where are you going now?
we are getting there       in the essence of memory
madness   seashells   time      on the beach
            time at the window        waiting
time undressing     violent time      time to go      time to rethink
            decisions bare       tree branches              time to climb     
scrap knees
time to fill     throat with ants        choke           slip into daydream
paint       you      dwindling in the corners of the canvas
stirring romance       time black     unrepentant       sacrificed

disappearing          


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Dear Frida

9/21/2018

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For Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

​Artist: Frida Kahlo
b. July 6, 1907, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico; d. July 13, 1954, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. 
Title:  Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Date: 1940
Click here for more information

Picture
My Dear Frida,
 
Today I listened for the hummingbird
but in the planet of eternity—there was only grief
and the hummingbird      did not come.
 
Usually I am accustomed to disappointment,
which like thorns—swathed         around my throat,
but today I cannot bear it.
 
I am writing to you because your eyes are open
and to be alive is to be erect
and to be seen            and to observe.
 
I also think this is what it means to be human.
 
Frida,
what I have known all along
is that something was always     almost happening,
 
to us    to you
 
and to anyone else disappearing.
 
We are only women      born in the land of bombs
exploding              in all the ways that women explode
 
and this is nothing unique.        I must tell you,
 
last night a black cat crossed my path
and this morning a monkey—the color of tar
 
sang the prettiest song          just where the ground began to split
 
I mourned for but a second,
 
because I am sure 
this is just a sign,        I know what it means to be human.

​"For Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird" has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, September 2018

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Eve

8/1/2018

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after Alessandro Nesci's Portrait of a Girl

​Artist:
 Alessandro Nesci
b. 1970, Rome, Italy
Title:  Portrait of A Girl (A Series of Paintings on Expressionism, oil painting on canvas with artistic made preparations) 
Date: Early 2000's

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Nesci about his inspiration for the series of paintings in which this piece is included and this is what he stated:

I tried to paint the portrait of a female figure, a girl. A girl who was born where humanity was born. In this case, the naked breast represents both the ancestral nature of the nude and the emancipation and sexuality together.
However, I want to emphasize something that is very important for me in art: every fencer of the work or of poetry, has different sensations and emotions in front of the art. And the readings, the explanations of the works are multiple: the one that gives the artist (but is not unique) and the one that gives the user (which is full of experiences derived from their personal experience, from their culture, social extraction, etc.) .
So, the explanation that I gave the picture, it's just a technical explanation and my personal content. But it does not have to influence who looks at the work.


More information found  here:
www.redbubble.com/people/alessandronesci/works/32911961-portrait-of-a-girl-series-on-expressionism-oil-painting-on-canvas-with-artist-made-preparations?asc=u
www.redbubble.com/people/alessandronesci
​www.artecampagnaromana.com/
www.saatchiart.com/alessandronesci


Picture
Picture

in man’s deep sleep
she came
teaching us   to come quietly
to gather the meat of the rib
between the rustle of leaves
and geraniums
 
to make something of it
 
to bear the burdens of masculinity
while naked     and scattered
 
&
undone by romance
slithering
in the seam of her toes
 
who was she?
 
the one who hungered for fruit?
the heritage of sin?
the anguish of birth?
the evolution of bone from bone        flesh of flesh?
 
or is she simply
the echo of mankind
 
where I am too       just a fallen woman?

"Eve after Alessandro Nesci's Portrait of a Girl" has been published in the poetry chapbook Cry Sweat Bleed Write 
      
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I Live There

4/6/2018

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for Van Gogh's Starry Night

​​​​Artist:
 Vincent Van Gogh
b. 1853, Zundert, Netherlands; d. 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Title:  Starry Night
Date: 1889

Information found  here:
​www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889
Picture

Tiny town         sitting
beneath blue violence

I live there.

Somewhere the scent of yellows.
Noiseless and suffered.

Somewhere           the world doesn’t end.

A place where we are all foolish,
 & bleeding         & hopeful.

A tiny town.

 Where there are no stars.

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Untitled 12

3/27/2018

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for Diego Rivera's Flower Vendor

​Artist: Diego Rivera
b. 1886, Guanajuato, Mexico; d. 1957, Mexico City Mexico
Title: The Flower Vendor
Date: 1941

Click here for more information
Picture

In the midst of the
American Dream

the weight of beauty
pulls you into yourself,

naked feet, 
vanishing underneath

what’s lovely
and pure; a valley of white lilies,
​
waiting,
inside what is tired, and calloused,

inside your sickly self,
moving.

But then,
you remind yourself 

to kneel before the flowers
and thank them

for the journey, 
and the hands,

and tears
that tied it all together;
​
and the miracle 
that not one was lost...

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In the Middle of the Ocean

2/28/2018

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      after Mark Bradford’s Let's Walk to the Middle of the Ocean
​​
​Artist:
 Mark Bradford
b. 1961, Los Angeles, California
Title: In the Middle of the Ocean
Date: 2015

Click here for more information
Picture

On the night we arrive,
it’s raining
and my arms are full
of bubbles    and ocean
and of things
that are beautiful
and real
and you.

This is a small dream;
this blue. black. yellow. night,
and our city is regal;
we glitter the road.
 
But somehow,
we keep getting back
to the day after
where everything’s ruined
and bruised
and our hands are unholy.

We get back to the place
where  we are not ready
​
to swim this current
or dreams.
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For ANNA!

12/12/2017

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Photograph taken while in taxi & crossing the Madison Avenue Bridge
Bronx, New York
Date Photo Taken: December, 2, 2017 by Kay Bell
Picture
​


In this rapid progress; 
I look sideways
and there she is;
arms filled with velvet rope blue
and fragments of concrete
spilling from her seams.

She must have been a perfectionist, 
that Anna,
each bold letter 
innocent of error,
conforming absolutely 
to the red brick
sheet of paper
and journey.

A-N-N-A

She writes her 
Bronx 
love story and
then whisks away,
to fix her life
and a bowl of cereal,
in her messy studio apartment,

above the  gas station,
while cars drive by
and I sit in the back seat
and wonder               who was she?

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Genesis 1:3

11/21/2017

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                         after Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World

​​Artist: Andrew Wyeth
b. 1917, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; d. 2009 Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
Title: Christina's World
Date: 1948

Click here for more information

Picture
​
i always wonder why i am here in the center of ambiguity placing parts of myself neatly across the terrain bits of sun scaffolding each bruise and the tears of God finishing me marring my flesh into submissive complexities while the sky rages in a decaying night garnishing each lonely space with: Let there be Light and there was…
​
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The End of Summer

9/12/2017

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   for Hamilton's Pin-up
Artist: Richard Hamilton
b. 1922, London England; d. 2011 London England
Title: Pin-up
Date: 1961

Click here for more information

Picture

​Each summer,
I pretend I’m not tired.
I roll my dread
into the pale nude mornings
& stretch,
my breasts waiting for me,
counting the slits in my heart,
the bric-brac field
of broken,
the anywhere,
everywhere
feelings of empty,
the mistaken lyrics
escaping my throat
& the people
who swore they knew me.

Each summer
I tire
and begin without shade.
My body erect and torn
in halves
singing from my belly.

I reach somewhere,
no where
closer
to find an unfilled space
inside of me,
where there is
laughter and rest.

1 Comment

An Abstraction of Your Life

9/8/2017

1 Comment

 
              for Matisse’s Italian Woman
​Artist: Henri Matisse
b. 1869, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France; d. 1954, Nice, France
Title: The Italian Woman
Date: 1916
Click here for more information
Picture



​



​Frequently   affliction shapes you    lips a line     unbroken       do not give your hands
their freedom    he glides over you  to sleep on his side    of the earth       and
your tears are afraid    to terrorize his fists.
 
How will your shoulders bear        the love and war         resounding
an exactness      of  pale     regrets     but of course
he is there with you.


Your thirst is deep        not real            you double         your doubts      in the ruffles
of your life        jaded    as the three buttons       on an unshapely blouse
worn by such an             unlovely woman
 
Fists     lips     freedom  suffocate you         beneath the heaviness         of your breasts


 
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