Portside

Committee Work

By Francesca Bell

The football players,

when accused of raping

the drunk girl, said she

had approached them,

pulled their pants down

and sucked their penises

into her mouth.

One claimed he was unable

to achieve an erection

despite her efforts.

Another felt inappropriate,

zipped up, and walked out.

One was seen behind her

with his pants down,

but none could say

whose fluids were found

in her vagina

or her underwear or her ass,

and the school had no interest

in DNA. The committee

closed the case, and

the football players went on

to an undefeated season,

trampling team after team.

They ran joyfully,

faster than the opposition,

faster even than all

the drunk girls who rush

to their knees, who bend over

pool tables and couches,

no longer content

to just ask for it,

no, those bitches

reach out to take it.

Francesca Bell’s poems appear in many journals, including B O D Y, ELLE, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Zone 3. Her translations appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, Blue Lyra Review, Circumference, Four by Two, and The Massachusetts Review. She co-translated Shatha Abu Hnaish’s book of poems, A Love That Hovers Like a Bedeviling Mosquito (Dar Fadaat, 2017).Red Hen Press will publish her first collection, Bright Stain, in 2019.