You might know Jessica Bell best through her work as a musician — she spent five years in the group Keep Shelly in Athens, as well as having released work as BRUNO and under her own name. She’s also been working on a number of books, including forays into both fiction and poetry. We’re pleased to present an excerpt from her new collection, A Tide Should Be Able to Rise Despite Its Moon, out now from Vine Leaves Press.

He stares through tinted glass
toward the sea.
The salty breeze
wafts through half-open vents.
He tries to roll
a cigarette
as the window eases open
with an electronic zing,
but the tobacco falls
between his toes.

He watches his son
as he dips his own toes
into the white foam
that licks the sand.

I will buy you a house by the sea, son.
One day, I will make it happen. I promise.

It’s been over five years
since they spoke.

***

The road you walk is chiselled
yet it can be sailed on smoothly
in your romanticized perception
of your everyday.

The road you walk is chiselled
yet you stumble over boulders
in your tragic perception
of your everyday.

The road you walk is chiselled
yet you are oblivious to its pitfalls
in your impulsive perception
of your everyday.

The road you walk is chiselled
and you feel every bump
in the reality
of your everyday.

The road you walk is not chiselled
It is an ocean; a body.

It is not a road at all.
It is you. 

***

The hum between the screen
and my face
scaffolds the last breath
of hope we have.

Two years of texts
were not enough
to hold together sixteen
years of us.

We were a constant
and now we’re a sigh.

It spills from my lips
in drips, marking its
territory with grief stains
that do not respond to bleach.

How long should I hold on
in this mottled skin?

A tide should still be able to rise
despite its moon.

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