10TH ANNUAL (AND FINAL) NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 19 :: KIM BRANDON on DENISE BELL
Week three of this year’s Poetry Month series is curated by JP Howard. You can read her curatorial statement here.
denise h bell (1947–2021 ) was an extraordinary poet. She passed away in February 2021 after complications from COVID-19. Her poetry is now her voice. Her first collection of urban poems, a crown of sonnets entitled, psalms along myrtle had been completed at the time of death. denise devoted her life to studying the craft of poetry and using it with a laser-like precision to showcase the stories, the hard truths and the sweet victories of marginalized and disenfranchised people. She encouraged and inspired writers to go deeper, to be fearless, to build our own tool boxes and to stand in the fire and then write the poem.
I first met denise h bell at a Women of Color Writers group reading in Brooklyn. She carried herself with a quiet softness. Her poetry on the other hand was raw power. There was realness, a reverence, relatability to each poem. She put in all out there; everything about us and our loved ones. The themes weren’t pretty and still she captured the tender humanity of living on the edge.
Kool Aide Epistle
by denise h bell (an excerpt — the last stanza)i don’t know what stopped me from screaming
yo sister i didn’t sign up to live on a tight rope
have mercy every day i pray for a better life
i deserve the same love respect you text about
When I was kid back in the 1970’s, we lived in a 20-family building. One day someone robbed and murdered the milkman in our vestibule. His body stayed there for hours waiting for the coroner. Anyone who left the building saw him there. This didn’t define us. But, it changed us all, none of us for the better. This is how I learned about death and being trapped behind a curtain of poverty. Somehow, the folks in our building leaned into each other. There was a tenderness to our lives that is often invisible eclipsed by despair, judgments and stereotypes of the hood.
When I heard denise h. bell’s poetry, I felt at home. I felt that tenderness. I knew these people, we were all locked in or locked out of our dreams and on a rare occasion a body might be the demarcation blocking the way. Her poem Bitter Words speaks to the patches of love and sorrow with her signature precision. Tinderbox nominated Bitter Words for its online poem of the year award in 2017
Bitter Words
jerrod wasn’t planned
love kept him growing in my womb
my g.e.d. r.n. was for him
i gave him things i never had
kisses hugs hearing i love you every day
jerrod was never a regret
he makes me forget my once bitter life
jerrod loves art
that’s how i got to know a basquiat from a monet
he taught me programming french
jerrod isn’t perfect
i’m his drill sergeant
they’ll be no numbers under his photo
i don’t know why/when/how jump shots became my nerd’s passion
jerrod loves manning up/playing with the big dogs
he makes me forget my once bitter life
what you mean Jerrod laying out on the court
they mistook him for who
blood of my blood drained gone no no no
lord jesus jesus lord how could you curse my womb
i can’t get this bitter taste out of my mouth
jerrod’s gone i can’t forget my once bitter life
denise encouraged writers to be fully engaged and not to a poet on the side lines. She was a proud member of Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill community. The bullet-less violence of gentrification gave her work a heightened agency. She was involved in many writing communities. She attended Cave Canemworkshops; she was also a Brooklyn Poets fellow; a proud member of Nickle Bag Women’s Writers Collective, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, Women of Color Writers group and others.
Her work appeared in Rattle, Tinderbox Review, Rigorous, Quail Bell, Anti Heroin Chic, The Chaffey Review and many others. denise’s poem: “remember my name,” was nominated for the Ploughshares Poem of the year.
remember my name
after i retired
i started a routine
discipline won’t let my mind wander
every morning i buy a paper coffee
look at obituaries taped on joe’s barbershop window
i like it when their families use photos
pictures make the dead more personal
i walk to my bench
watch workers waiting for their bus
they’re who i used to be
i was a thirty year transit man
i was union
fought for security dignity
my phone always rang
i was part of the next best thing
retirement made me a used to be
cora’s out saving souls
there’s no sense in me sitting in an empty house
she prays i stop being stubborn and walk in her light
i watch joe open up
i look to see if he taped up new notices
if he do
i get up read them
while reading i got to thinking
when my when time comes
cora got to put a picture on my obituary
it’ll help people remember who i was
the old man that sat on the bench
The Village Voice described her work as “strong, emotional, and proud.” her work was in off shore journal, live at the nuyorican café, and the chaffey review. denise’s work focuses on the disenfranchised and those who are forced to live a marginalized life. I’m including this link to “a BOP,” to show her mastery and dedication to craft.
You can hear denise, reading I AM THE SHIT AKA USED TO BE / A BOP. From Rattle #62 Winter 2018.
Almost three years ago, denise and I both joined Nickle Bag. The group met monthly to support writers over a certain age and to workshop together. The goal was to complete a writing project. Denise was well on her way. She had her manuscript in the final stages and was simply looking to get feedback on her pieces before publishing her collection. The women in Nickle Bag were a gift to me. We met monthly to offer support and critiques.
This was when I noticed the extreme dedication denise had to her craft. The sonnets, the sestina, the villanelle, and the Zuihitsu forms were her playground. She studied form with the best poets. And read everybody and said her favorite place was Poets House. She said that poet Georgia Douglas Johnson was her spirit guide.
She was very private except when it came to her love of poetry. Here she was open, generous and non-competitive. Her advice to me was to stay true to my voice, first and foremost and then she advised me to read far and wide, find poetic voices similar to mine. She heard more Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Ai in my voice. Funny how we are the seeds of other poetic legacies and don’t always know it. Lucille Clifton and Ntozake Shange are my spirit guides. They appear in my poems like old friends.
denise suggested I join more serious workshops and retreats — like Cave Canem, VONA and Wild Seed. She introduced me to Brooklyn Poets, where I would join her two years later in the honor of being a Brooklyn Poet, Poet of the Week.
She suggested that we all submit more work to top shelf journals, apply for fellowships and awards, and we did. As she reviewed my work, she sometimes suggested playing with structure and trying the poem in a different poetic form. For the most part she simply encouraged me to “keep doing.”
There were always “check this out” emails from denise. Nicklebag moved a to daily action/accountability thing — via a text each morning. It was amazing to see all the work she put into her being a poet. This more than any replicated into my own writing life. I completed my first collection — Red Honey and submitted it. I became a VONA alum, attended Wild Seed and a Cave Canem workshop. I am fully engaged in my Brooklyn writing communities.
kiesha’s blues
smoke the pipe let me dwell in my so called deep thoughts
foggy poisoned thoughts built a monument to my mind
a mind that rationalized a strange sense of values
a mind that began crying why me what now
smoke the pipe built a sham lurid monument to my mind
a mind that’s drowned in k2’s frustrations ferocious fears
a mind that could no longer ignore vicious truths
i didn’t want to listen see hear truths
truths replaced smoke pipe illusions brought about by them
i’m doomed my new reality screamsunlike jesus you won’t be risen to a new life
face it baby you’re doomed to dwell in nothingness
caused by your addicted scrambled fried brain bullshit
______
denise told of a dozen ways to die on the avenue and just who would be left to grieve. She showed us just how much love could be found if only you know to turn your head to the side a tiny bit and shake loose all that bias you were taught about certain people. I came to see that it was well worth it — as love in times of sorrow — if far sweeter than any other.
I wrote this poem Out of Sight with denise on my mind — here is an excerpt.
out of sight…
each year our number of smiling visitors
declines a little more
so do our phone calls and the care packages
while the line at the men’s prison is standing room only
I keep meaning to ask other Black women why this is
I don’t I’m too afraid to hear that me being in here
means they’re doing time too
I listen to the long timers
they say you can either do your time or the time does you
I focus on my appeal, my safety and my sanity…
denise’s work impacts my poetic voice. She changed the way my narrator especially in “I” poems. My goal is to remember the richness of knowing that we are all victims trying to be heroes, and villains missing the mark of becoming saints.
This was denise’s ARTISTIC STATEMENT:
I write poetry because it is my initial way to relay my despair, empathy, compassion, and passion. My poems focus on those who are marginalized because they are poor, aged, mentally ill or victimized by the oppressive behavior of so called “normal, run of the mill people.”
I use many poetic forms when I craft my work. I am quite intrigued by the Bop, Sonnet, Persona, Duplex, internal rhymes and alliteration. I believe poetry is more than jotting down words. It is a craft that demands listening, reading, studying, writing, and rewriting…
vashti’s lament
i so wanted to have a womb bearing fruit
i so wanted him/her to suckle from my breast
when i was young i so wanted an almond joy
my daddy’s best friend gave me my favorite candy
all i had to do was to sit on
daddy’s best friend’s lap
he his hands began to poke hurt me
once i so wanted to teach my womb fruit to read write
i’d show him or her nothing but love
grandma was washing my panties
she screamed how you get them stains
you too young to menstruate
daddy came home got his glock
he blew aaron away
the judge set daddy free
cause he suffered temporary insanity
grandma said daddy was right to kill aaron
to this day
daddy walks around frustrated fighting mad
me i don’t have no more taste for almond joy
i’ll never bear fruit in my womb
i’ll never be able to give him/her my love
There is so much more to denise h bell. This is what I came to know in our time workshopping together. If I can be as passionate about my family, my work, my community as denise was, then I can count myself as one of the many writers she helped to flourish.
So just how do you say goodbye to a warrior poet friend sister? You don’t! I am committed to sharing her voice and her brilliance.
Kim Brandon is a poet, artist, activist and storyteller. This year, she is planning to publish her first collection of poetry, Red Honey, which is dedicated to her father. Her work has been performed onstage in three of the annual 50in50 monologue showcase events at Billie Holiday Theatre and in Came Back with a Clap Back: A Celebration of Women’s Voices by Emotive Fruition. Brandon’s poems have also been published in journals including the Hawaii Review, Peregrine and Mom Egg Review as well as anthologized in The Dream Catcher’s Song and Boundaries and Borders, forthcoming from the Women of Color Writers’ Workshop. She is a VONA alum and attended the Wild Seeds Writers Retreat in 2021. Brooklyn’s Borough President presented her with a citation for community service in 2018. This past fall, Brandon was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow.
