Allison Field Bell
Four Walls Become a Woman
Who shall measure the heat and violences of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a
woman’s body? –Virginia Woolf
I can measure it here, where the morning light spills
across the page, and my legs are thrown into shadow.
Or there, where outside the window redwood trees
tower over wall, over roof, softening the rising sun.
I found myself in a book again, not me but my body.
This heavy thing they call woman. Another man writing
my inner monologue. Another man thinking about pregnancy,
motherhood. But what of the myriad ways I desire?
The urgency to fill a page with words. Sex, too, but sometimes
I’d rather just be alone in a forest. I imagine a cabin.
Jumble of tree trunks needing to be turned to firewood. Shirtless
as any man, with my axe, cracking open the orange centers.
Men write me as if they understand walls. Four walls:
a room for this woman’s body. If I’m being an optimist:
my cabin. But most likely a track home in suburbia.
Ripe and full with another child. Wife. Mother.
Or perhaps a mistress, a temptress: riddled with desire
for him. The manic pixie dream of his dream. I’d be thin
as a waif in a fairytale. I’d smoke cigarettes, drink vodka.
I’d sleep on silk sheets and steal thongs from department stores.
We’d stay in hotels, order bottles of champagne. I’d tell him
I’ve done this for him, for his desire. I’d lie. Things I’ve done
for men: lie. On my back. On my belly. I am between his walls,
his hotel’s sheets, our bodies not our bodies, together.
Between my walls, in my room, there is no body. Woman or otherwise.
My walls are my own. My words are of water, my windows, light.
Allison Field Bell is a PhD candidate in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, WITHOUT WOMAN OR BODY, forthcoming 2025 from Finishing Line Press and the CNF chapbook, EDGE OF THE SEA, forthcoming 2025 from Cutbank. Allison's prose appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Gettysburg Review, The Adroit Journal, New Orleans Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Passages North, Palette Poetry, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.
Return to September 2024 Edition
Who shall measure the heat and violences of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a
woman’s body? –Virginia Woolf
I can measure it here, where the morning light spills
across the page, and my legs are thrown into shadow.
Or there, where outside the window redwood trees
tower over wall, over roof, softening the rising sun.
I found myself in a book again, not me but my body.
This heavy thing they call woman. Another man writing
my inner monologue. Another man thinking about pregnancy,
motherhood. But what of the myriad ways I desire?
The urgency to fill a page with words. Sex, too, but sometimes
I’d rather just be alone in a forest. I imagine a cabin.
Jumble of tree trunks needing to be turned to firewood. Shirtless
as any man, with my axe, cracking open the orange centers.
Men write me as if they understand walls. Four walls:
a room for this woman’s body. If I’m being an optimist:
my cabin. But most likely a track home in suburbia.
Ripe and full with another child. Wife. Mother.
Or perhaps a mistress, a temptress: riddled with desire
for him. The manic pixie dream of his dream. I’d be thin
as a waif in a fairytale. I’d smoke cigarettes, drink vodka.
I’d sleep on silk sheets and steal thongs from department stores.
We’d stay in hotels, order bottles of champagne. I’d tell him
I’ve done this for him, for his desire. I’d lie. Things I’ve done
for men: lie. On my back. On my belly. I am between his walls,
his hotel’s sheets, our bodies not our bodies, together.
Between my walls, in my room, there is no body. Woman or otherwise.
My walls are my own. My words are of water, my windows, light.
Allison Field Bell is a PhD candidate in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, WITHOUT WOMAN OR BODY, forthcoming 2025 from Finishing Line Press and the CNF chapbook, EDGE OF THE SEA, forthcoming 2025 from Cutbank. Allison's prose appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Gettysburg Review, The Adroit Journal, New Orleans Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Passages North, Palette Poetry, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.
Return to September 2024 Edition