About the Feature
Again they can’t find anything
In the pantry (even when you point
Or turn on the light) they keep
The heat
Down to save
All they have and they have
A dog that keeps them
Up at night (and other concerns
Like where to bury
Their landslide eyes
At dusk) and dusk
Means helping them
With their folding
Pulling their limbs
In dim light today they can’t
Seem to move their arms right
Tomorrow their legs what is wrong
With them so constantly
Stiff so prone
To heat in the nape
Lost in their lives
As though the lights were always
Out but when they leave
There are nothing
But long nights
Of fear sown into the bedsheets
And the terrible proceedings
Of the windowpane shocked
With bats some part
Of them grows
With the night I know that
And is all bent
Out of shape
There’s the smell too
That their eyes make
Inside the sleep mask how they interrupt
The doorway how
They’d spend every winter
In the North
If they could because they couldn’t
Care less
That the fields have come
Knocking once again
For their little faces back
About the Author
A Swiss native, E. C. Belli’s work has appeared in Guernica, Gulf Coast, Diagram, the Antioch Review, Caketrain, Europe: revue littéraire mensuelle, and PO&SIE (France). She is the author of Plein Jeu (Accents Publishing, 2010), was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and is an editor at Argos Books.