Who are you when you’ve been laid bare?
When there’s nothing left for the world
to rip from your body, eat what’s still alive,
leaving all else to cook in the heat of the compost pile?
Carly Jo Bell (she/they) is a queer poet and artist. Her work draws from psychology, ecology, mythology, and lived experience to ask what happens when inherited stories collide with who we each are at our core.
Each poem is an invitation to consciously immerse oneself in that friction while remaining compassionately curious about what truths it may hold.
The Writing
A poem about the feeling of being happy with where I am now while missing aspects of something I once had—despite absolutely not wanting those things back.
A poem about my family experiencing the collapse of layers upon layers of myths—myths of white supremacy, American exceptionalism, being the “perfect family,” and more.
A poem about the rage I have felt at my fundamentalist Christian school experience.
First & Final
Every poem starts somewhere.
First & Final is an email series documenting the journey each poem takes from the first messy fragment in my Notes app to the finished draft, as well as what I discover about the work, myself, and being an artist along the way.