Early-Morning Scroll and Other Poetry by Bethany Belkowski

Early-Morning Scroll:

4 reasons to start mouth taping at night. What not to say 
the morning of your parents’ funeral. 2 ways to leave
the love of your life. Another horrifying AI
-generated video of a dog biting its owner’s face—
her skull morphs into a head of cabbage. The dog chews
then also turns to cabbage. An absurd plate
piled high with baked beans: could you eat it 
to escape death row? Get ready with me
as an amputee. 85% of affairs
begin in the workplace, therapist Jeff explains. How not to suck 
at drawing a realistic landscape. The grass isn’t always greener 
on the other side. How to survive alone
in the woods for 48 hours. Why it’s easier to stay 
in bed than sort out your shit. Breaking down
today’s news: Red 40 is killing what little remains of the Gen Z 
work ethic. How to keep
from pissing on your hand when taking 
out your tampon. Call of Duty livestream,
UAV above. The cannon event every girl experiences 
by the time she’s 25. Trump’s dead;
just kidding! ICE is in Philly again, 
and the Elmo drummer is still fighting
the good fight. 6 ways to resist advances
in tech before all the jazz is gone. Dramatic 
music and “searching your whole life
for a feeling you can’t explain.” Pride
and Prejudice edit. Avoidant attachment explained 
in child’s terms. Anaphase: the great break-up
of the body. 2 ways to boost your libido
without losing sight of who you really are. Another edit 
sexualizing a morally gray character (double tap). Jojo Siwa 
grinding on chicks in full KISS getup
for some reason. Top 10 things not to shove up your ass 
as a grown adult. 5 signs you’re settling
arguments too easy. Another man playing
electric guitar without a shirt—Black Sabbath’s 
“Changes.” A virtual tarot card reading:
the Three of Swords. Death with dignity
just legalized in Delaware. No tax 
on tips or overtime touts the fascist
thought machine. “Are you scrolling instead of sleeping 
again?” Seafood boil mukbang.

On the Negligible Distance Between Intimacy and Invasion

Tonight at dinner, I’m doing everything I can for you 
not to recognize me, but I really haven’t changed

my hair, my clothes, my sex, or anything at all
to make this more interesting. I only have my words—

like always. So I mock your patchy beard, knowing you're only trying 
to look like him when he died. Even as you stare

through my eyes, I see your father’s
face. To face you finally in this place, after you jumped

in my dreams every night this week, and I cried 
nearly every time, I empty my mouth on the table:

You’d look better if you shaved. But you won’t 
talk family, and neither can I since I felt

your mother’s wilted womb press to me
in front of your father’s casket, proving I could not bear

the life you always wanted. Good people 
can be bad parents, you remind me.

So instead, we talk religion, how you didn’t realize it 
makes you crave shame and grief. You can’t believe

I still practice. Only when I’m home,
I concede, but my new lover’s hands always felt like home,

especially when we pray, though I know I’m just repeating 
words that only have meaning because I’ve said them

too many times. That’s why you’re here. Isn’t it
funny? You claim to dislike the ritual, the cyclical

return to night where conversations are just two people searching 
for validation. We’re both here, though,

we’re learning to speak lines
as written. You ask for funny, so I tell you I lost

my grandma in The Big C. I ask for
funny, so you tell me you lost your virginity

to a tattoo artist who hatched a pearl 
on your inner thigh for good luck

then gave you the clam. You recall how
I couldn’t touch you—call it lame, and I know

you mean to say shame. I offer the word,
sterile. You mishear: still here? I nod to agree.

Notebook Fragments

after Ocean Vuong

Granny says, “There’s no use trying
to fill a hole you dug during a new moon.”

Sometimes I hold my lover
in my mouth just to prove I cannot overflow.

Discovery: the first vibrators were medical. Used to treat hysteria. 

Good or bad?

5:27 a.m. I wake after dreaming again
            of Aslan, strapped to a stone slab, free

from his mane. Bloodied stone knife digging a well
            into his side. Crimson and water mixing. His humiliation: a wound between his legs.

How much longer must I argue that it’s the pauses and gaps that hold the most poetry?

Sartre wrote that every soul has a hole
            the size of its Creator. Each fills it

the best they can, an ultimately futile effort to satiate 
            a helpless craving. I beg my lover

to say something sexy in Spanish. I like it better when 
I can’t understand him—acentos and all.

“¿Dónde están las chicas lindas?”

This morning, my 63-pound dog challenged a doe
            grazing in the field. He barked. She bowed her head

and continued eating. In her eyes,
I saw every woman I’ve ever known.

“Pick your scars,” Granny instructs, “perhaps more will form to keep
them company.” She wants me to mark this body like every woman she’s ever known.

The ancients thought the womb wandered, like an animal 
within an animal. My paternal great-grandmother

wrote little stories on little pages before forgetting 
her own name. Locked in a glass case

in Granny’s living room, I hear her
fictions whisper. I ask for them as my only inheritance.

Discovery: My vaginal opening
is the width of a pen cap. That’s what the gynecologist says after struggling to find it.

Surely, my creator is bigger than this.

In Catholic school, they taught us not to reduce God 
to concepts. I pray

when I can manage the thought of expanding 
my lungs to the width of an altar

shaped like a sepulcher and draped in hemp cloth for me
to touch. Matthew 9:20-22: a woman afflicted with bleeding

for twelve years wipes
her hands clean of self-sin. 

Good or bad?

8:29am. Hysterical paroxysm (x4). La petite 
mort. Relief enough to try again.

I study the trans poets because they write about resurrection 
better than any gospel I’ve ever read. The Word made flesh.

I met a woman tonight. A potter, an artist 
from the city. A cold city. Maybe

I shouldn’t have because I think I can only love a woman 
like a man, but she let me. Briefly. A tour

guide at the botanical center tells us trees are poems 
we can read only after cutting them down.

Since then, I’ve grown so desperate
I’ve pulled all the flowers from her hair.

Sometimes you have to kill your darlings to learn their names. 

(Eveline)

I met a woman, not you. In her room, I requested that 
            Siri set a timer so I didn’t fall asleep.

The word “robot” is derived from the Slavic “rabota,” meaning “forced labor.” It’s root, 
“rab,” meaning “slave.”

Yikes.

In ninth grade, a boy on the bus said he won
a Frida Kahlo art contest by painting the ugliest woman he could. He said that.

O to be object—even as perpetual subject.

My best friend and I drink wine and recall our first times
            being hit by a man. I hit back. She didn’t want to anger her father more. She said that.

I’m going to lose my shit when Tyler Joseph dies. 

I met a woman. Then I promised to stop.

3:57 a.m. The crackling phone line sounds
            comforting when my lover finally finishes speaking.
Dad always said, “Things that sound like fires make good fires.” 
11/6/24: My sister wakes me with her call. “Is this real life?” she asks.
            I think my poems will make good fires.

At the shooting range for the first time, my second shot set my lane ablaze.
            My conservative friend says he’s never seen anything like it.

We stayed to watch the firemen choke it out.

I dreamed Granny starved herself. Whittled herself down so small. Nothing more 
than a pair of triceps glued to fragile bones. I realized that hunger

is only begging for what you cannot save. I held her 
            hand, let her pull me close and whisper,

“My girl, you are

an appeal to being.” Like all holes, that's all I wanted to be. 

I promise I will tell my girls to want more.

17 Lines After Touring the Correctional Facility

As a child, I learned the zoo’s crushed 
rock paths with ease, always leading
the hands meant to guide me
to the wolves. My mother pointed, marveled at 
their teeth. Held behind sticky barbs,
their sad animal eyes found me, laughing 
that I too was trapped—I just wandered
a wider cage. So today, when I watched a man 
fog prison glass as he pointed and laughed
at my canines flat from my 9-5 and mimed 
tearing off my blouse, I, docile and domesticated, 
didn’t move, but acknowledged the deep craving
for the dark, soft, vulnerable 
spot on his neck. I think I’d like
to hang there, hold there. I think I 
could love him, and his sad animal 
eyes could love mine too.

BETHANY R. BELKOWSKI is poet and grant writer, writing verse in the margins while working to secure funds for local governments to improve and restore communities. Her work has previously appeared in Esprit, Rush Magazine, and in a publication by Moonstone Press.