four poems
by Olivia Bell
Nietzschean Sheep
I do not want the long, sad, golden light of summer at my wedding. But I do not know how to prevent this. I’d like crushed spirits, birds of prey, Republican wives. I want you to wear esoteric fabrics. Someone dead in the swimming pool at the end. And porcelain shattered everywhere. I love you my blonde Brit but I’ll be damned if I raise our babies Protestant. I remember discovering that only Catholics confess. I remember my first time so clearly. The tang of mildew, the spirit pulsing on the other side. And the joy of His forgiving mercy.
Lessons from the Equus Ferus Przewalskii
I had sex on molly and accidentally fell in love. They say don’t ever have sex on molly because no sex will ever be that good again. I tried to escape to Mexico. I bought all my food at street markets, the fruit tiny, feathers still on the eggs. I had great sex there but it wasn’t anything like making love. I was on Wellbutrin and it was making me pissed off. So was the heat. I put my mattress on the floor in the spot under the window where I could maximize the air flow just right, nothing touching my skin except the sweat. The showers didn’t help just made me more wet. There was nothing to do but melt. All the beer was warm and it rained every night and I wanted someone to hold me down. I thought of the one herd of truly wild horses left on this world, out in the steppes somewhere in Asia. Wild, not feral –– I mean, they’re genetically different from other horses. So I think that means you couldn’t tame them in just a lifetime, even if you tried. No matter where you took them.
New York I Love You But
We need Tupperware, a colander, a bigger trash can. We live behind a beautiful old church in Harlem. When I make love I focus out the window towards the giant crucifix on top. The apartment smells like the plastic from online packages and my roommate’s Sour Diesel. It’s so bright in New York. We need a drying rack, bags for the compost, a book for the coffee table that makes us look smart. The curtains are sheer. I buy an eye mask so I can sleep. We have a balcony with fake grass and real plants in lowfired ochre pots where my roommate smokes and calls her boyfriend. I can call my little sister or my mom, and I can chew nicotine gum. If I’m drunk I’ll allow a cigarette, just like everyone else. I don’t know who I’m fooling with the DJ board, or the business casual, or the acrylic nails, which interrupt my tactile experience with the world, anyway. I need to make it worse before I make it real. We need measuring cups, a dustpan, a few dish cloths. Where do these things disappear off to? Wherever they go I will go, someday, too, maybe.
The Gateless Gate
This year I have had many marvelous and mysterious experiences. I tried an oyster for the first time, fresh and with little fuss. I decided I liked it. The brine, and after, the buzz. I got fitted for my first bra since middle school and finally caged my nipples. I saw a performance art piece where a woman drugged herself on stage and she did this every night. I wrote poems that may get published but will break nobody’s heart. And I went on some first dates and I hated most of them and I got drunk on all of them. The meditation retreat was not everything I wanted yet I admired the monks for their discipline and for their stark tonsured heads. I abided. I contemplated. But a picture of a rice bowl cannot satisfy your hunger. Show me your face before you were born, they said. I turned on the shower and waited for the steam to fog up the mirror.
Photo of Olivia Bell
BIO: Olivia Bell is a recent graduate of Yale University, where she was an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. Her poetry and fiction has previously appeared in The Yale Literary Magazine, which she also served as an editor, as well as the Nashville Review and the Daily Herald, among others. She recently received Yale’s Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for her poem “The Hare” and Elmore A. Willett’s Prize for Fiction for her short story “Permission,” was honored at the 2024 and 2025 Yale College Poets Reading, and was awarded the Frederick M. Clapp Fellowship to pursue poetry post-graduation.