Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Alamo Theory
    Alamo Theory
    Alamo Theory
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Alamo Theory

    By Josh Bell

    2/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

  • Very tuned into popular culture
  • Josh Bell teaches poetry writing workshops at Harvard
  • Josh Bell's first book was named one of Flavorwire's 50 Essential Books of Poetry.
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 16, 2016
    ISBN9781619321588
    Alamo Theory

    Related to Alamo Theory

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      1 The doctor makes a curving incision in the left topback of my skull andlifts the cap— “What areaam I here to work on?” But Ijust want to wish his son a Happy Birthday—It had been my aim, the reason I’dwalked right into this Doctor dream—In the morn

      11 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      leisure for the youth / housing for everyone homeless / fresh fruit in the trees & kitchens of every American / a belly full & living / land back—truly & in its truest form / reparations for all the land & promise Black America has been stripped of s

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g

      3 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      A River Runs Through It

      Apr 14, 2020

      A River Runs Through It
      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      i look like someonehealing from an accidentbecause i am someonehealing from an accidentthe book of actsscales falling from saul’s eyesremembering my capacityfor stillnesshow long can i sitwithout looking awaythe fear of god escapingi desperately need

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Maybe every choice is in some way false,like whether to wonder or worry,or feel alive or alone in Clevelandor Memphis or any standard double queentrying to unwrap a tiny hotel soap.There’s always another one waitingin the dish like a stale communion

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Louise Erdrich

      Dec 4, 2017

      Maybe I would characterize 2016 as a movie car chase, and 2017 as the reveal where all of us anonymous motorists who got side-swiped, flipped, forced off bridges and into concrete abutments, rise out of the wreckage yelling for real. My list is compo

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      The purpose of being alive is to carry a sequence of code.And so, being adopted, I’m part of a plot, a sleeper cellin enemy territory, quietly working against the systemfrom within. It’s fall, I’m on an ancestry website signing up for a DNA kit,becau

      4 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      No Country

      Nov 11, 2019

      No Country
      10 min read

    • Article

      Exodus

      Sep 15, 2018

      My exodus occurred after years wandering the wilderness of my hometown. For bread to live, for bread to leave, I worked a part-time gig at the Oregonian’s downtown insert facility, stacking pallet after pallet of inky-ass newspapers. The day in quest

      15 min read

    • Article

      Some Sweet Minutes

      May 19, 2021

      Some Sweet Minutes
      8 min read

    • Article

      Insurgent Hoop

      Sep 2, 2022

      Insurgent Hoop
      12 min read

    • Article

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      With Whomever Will Have Me

      Dec 23, 2021

      With Whomever Will Have Me
      10 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Sep 22, 2021

      Readers’ Letters
      5 min read

    • Article

      What's The Meaning Of Life? Ask Protomartyr

      Sep 29, 2017

      Protomartyr lead singer and lyricist Joe Casey walks us through some of the thorny questions behind the band's new album, Relatives In Decent, track by track.

      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Alamo Theory

    2/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Hmmm... There's undeniably some clever wordsmithing here. It just didn't connect with me most of the time.
    • 2/5
      Obviously some real work went into crafting these poems, but they are way too abstract and surreal for my taste. Parts of a few were something I could relate to, but there was little here I could say I enjoyed.

    Book preview

    Alamo Theory - Josh Bell

    Dollar Dollar Bill

    One more Jacobean kiss

    and you’ll wind up related to me.

    One more emotion

    and I’m coming for you, like a sparrow.

    Set your phenomenology

    on the windowsill.

    Filthy, meet Family. Family,

    I want to get marketable again.

    In the meantime, what are your thoughts

    on a completely male garden?

    As little closure, maybe, as there is

    a permanence? This being, also, the time

    of the wandering Miss Americas.

    Loose thumb-bones, rattling

    in a mint tin. One more emotion

    and both Dakotas will explode.

    One more condition

    and I’ll be exiting my relevance.

    And what was it, finally,

    so dead about him, Family?

    I think I just saw a fox.

    Yes, with its little foxen teeth,

    like Ezekiel’s. Of course, you were off busy,

    revising your plague journals.

    Bringing clock to the beltline

    of Orion. What could’ve you done

    about the remaining days

    no longer outnumbering us?

    Voice of the dying groupie

    like a deck of cards being shuffled.

    One last electromagnetic pulse,

    one last electromagnetic pulse,

    and the neutral bodies of the dead

    dropping from our larger, living bodies.

    The truth? I thought the castration threat

    a touch on the heavy side of the tonality.

    But you got your point across.

    And by then, we were a much

    cleaner people, anyway.

    Alamo Theory

    Night falling once like a horse

    through a bridge. Page God

    refusing to be survived. Page God

    hollering over one dirty haystack

    at whoever’s hiding behind the next

    dirty haystack, and no one’s getting

    off this tractor alive, no one without

    a pod of vanilla, stuck like a witch’s

    finger in the throat. Often who goes

    there isn’t the bees. Isn’t the cherry trees.

    No one’s darker than me. No one’s

    big enough for pogroms. No one’s

    grammar gets a pass. Can’t you

    hear the popping of the karen-gun?

    Why the Hittites, why the Etruscans,

    sore and lost between vast greatness?

    See the mountains, their trauma halos

    of power line? Okay now show me

    your anagram. No I don’t even care.

    We bury a prom dress in the sand

    of every coast; sew a new prom dress

    from the flag of every coast. Jesus

    sat down, calmly, fashioned himself

    a whip of leathern cord. Page God

    had never recorded premeditation

    at such levels. We never really learned

    the correct usage of the voice box,

    either, but when we took ourselves

    by the neck, it was ancient, our language,

    brave the living mammal pinned

    to its duration, the problem with the orgy

    always witness, witness, witness.

    Your breath comes out in a pretty

    cloud of blue, which is a different color

    than most people use. What a brand-

    new giveaway. Students of the game

    have noticed that often, before I shoot,

    I take the time to mention vegetation

    fretting somewhere across a fact-lit

    red hill. It’s getting late and I’m the only

    American on the dance floor. Still.

    Josh II: The Return of Josh

    We thought it walked a lot like Josh, clean white shirt down the soybean rows and toward us at the tree line, Josh walking through a field so green and real it made us feel like getting married just to look at it. Except for how the cricket-sound had moved inside of us, the crickets stopped their buzzing as he walked, and we took our eyes off Josh for a second, cows on fire in the pasture neighboring the soybean field, saw them crashing, tallow and sulfur, into golden hay bales. Again we turned our eyes to Josh, and we really thought it walked a lot like Josh, closer now, coming through the rows, with two large birds (this was strange) braiding what looked to be a length of red ribbon into his hair. Of course he was still a pretty good ways off — close enough that we could hear him singing, and I thought it sang a lot like Josh — but it was still just a little ways off now and the ribbon was a thin red ribbon and I couldn’t say for sure it was a ribbon. So I asked Earl about the ribbon and Earl said Ribbon, and I asked Kim about the ribbon and Kim said Ribbon, and we agreed the ribbon made us feel like getting married just to look at it. And we agreed it walked a lot like Josh, except for now it was crawling, vines poking through the cloth of its pants legs like insect feelers, and we asked the ribbon birds to keep their eyes on Josh, and likewise we kept our eyes on Josh, or at least we thought that they were eyes: it was getting late, they worked like eyes, they followed Josh, and we felt the ribbon birds were on our side in all of this, that our parents would be calling to us soon, that the streetlights would be flickering on in the neighborhoods behind us, and Josh still closer, holding out his hands and opening his mouth as if he’d ask a favor, and I thought it would be smart if we could all agree upon an answer. So I asked Earl about the answer, and Earl said Answer, and I asked Kim about the answer, and Kim said — and this was just before we learned the truth about the ribbon — Kim said: I don’t think that’s Josh.

    Vince Neil Meets Josh in a Chinese Restaurant in Malibu (after Ezra Pound)

    Back when my voice box

    was a cabinet-full of golden vibrators, and my hair

    fell white across the middle of my back

    like a child’s wedding dress,

    I made love to at least a dozen girls

    dressed up to look like me: the hotel bed a sky

    filled with the flock

    of our south-flying mic scarves,

    the back of my head and the front

    appearing

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1