☀ What Sparks Poetry: Brandon Shimoda on "The Bell"

it began to rain
and did not stop

it stopped raining
then started again

the rain slid underneath the skin
that held the desert together

and the people, together

it rained for the span of each lifetime
of everyone who was living here,
or found themselves living here,
or unable to live here
any longer,
but unable to leave

it began to rain six feet away
from where it was not raining

and did not stop

it smelled like slugs
on the bed I mean
dogs in the street

the average citizen
did not believe
because they could not see
nor could they feel

distress
and division

through which a perversely sober person might pass
like a sleepwalker through a curtain

+

then a bell rang
all night It rang all night

No one slept But listened
to the bell

framed
by empty urgency

No one could be saved
by a dream

Everyone plunged into
the least suggestive aether

The bell was murmuring was a seam
torn open

it was windy
The fence flew back and forth

the bell held to the world
by tanzaku, blank,

banging against the skin
of its echoes

The bell stopped was regrouping

the soul over the neighborhood
crushed against
the fibers of a nest

bled
bled into the riverbed

failed
and yet without supplication

slipped out of the skin
It blew against

Who is it
Who is at the gate
Who is at the door

Someone who is hungry
who wants me to be hungry
who brought with them death notifications

Who made it back
I cannot believe I made it back

I cannot believe that I went anywhere and made it back
I should not have made it back.
I feel like I should not have made it back

+

I drank the needle I put water on for tea
for them. I wait for the water
for them

whose face is it
in the steam?

no water, no steam
no tea
for them

All the leaves are
on the bush

no rest no sleep
I keep them awake

in the middle of the night
is morning for them,

they keep asking
in the form of those closest, with voices

happy new year, is it a question?
is how are you doing? a question

to which I keep answering,

one minute despair,
the same minute delirium