Honeycomb Heart

By Chelsea Bartell

Chelsea Bartell's second poetry collection balances on the ideology, things that sting still have the capacity to make us sweeter. She firmly believes that the bitter, unsightly pieces of our lives have the most to offer in terms of growth. Chelsea uses the extended metaphor of the bees and the honeycomb to organize the book into two parts. 

In the first section, Bees, she returns with her ferocious voice to write poems about toxic relationships, environmental advocacy, and the lack of relationship with her father. Each poem will leave you craving the emotional justice she deserves, the justice she believes we are all worthy of. Without opening ourselves up to not only heal but to receive this emotional justice, we create a stagnant, unhappy, and trapped version of ourselves and our lives. If we choose to see that the hardships can offer a transformational opportunity we can forge a path to healing. Chelsea's track to healing is her following section, Honeycomb.

 

Bartell's culmination of pain and tension show their face through the Honeycomb. She writes about tenaciously and gracefully healing her wounds in order to elevate the love and peace in her life. Her feminist undertones will walk you through her journey as a woman and as a woman author. Also, what is sweeter than love? Chelsea intertwines gorgeous, thoughtful love poems to her significant other and to herself because she highly values loving others as much as we love ourselves. 

Upon finishing this collection, Chelsea hopes you too will see the sweetness amidst all the pain you endure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chelsea Bartell
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393153962

Book preview

Copyright 2019 Chelsea Bartell

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotation in book reviews or scholarly journals. Permissions contact: [e-mail]

Cover art by Veronika Litvinova

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To be a writer is to call on a wound and ask it to bleed through your pen.

To be a writer is to decorate blood and gore with flowery metaphors.

To be a writer is to find something cathartic in emotionally operating from your pain.

My purpose with this book is to write through my wounds; to allow them one final breath before burying them for good. I want to expose the ugly, inconsistent, ever-changing process it is to heal.

I want to expose my truths. The ones I’ve hid from and those I’ve confronted. By healing my wounds, I have the capacity to bloom into this world with ferocity and tenderness. By healing my wounds, I empower others to heal and bloom into this world with me.

I want my art to make space for you to be raw, honest, fierce, and graceful.

Table of Contents

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Monster in The Closet (Of My Ribcage)

I’ve Become A Mausoleum

Existential Wonderment

She Can’t Cry So Her Flowers Die

Murderous

A Stranger Who Shares My Blood

Ghosts Can’t Bleed

Spilling the Yolk of My Heart

Broken Parents Raise Broken Children

‘I Love You’ Tastes Sour

Speaking to My Boundaries

A Guilt That is Not Mine to Bear

Honesty is Optional to Some

Foreigners

Overstaying Your Welcome

Coldness Ironically Spreads Like Wildfire

Humanness

Watercolor Woman

An Attraction of Deprivation

Humans or Citations

Carnage

Mailbox Mouth

Victorian Mahogany Crown

Somatic Memories

Destination

Love Me Not

Hand-Me-Down Love

Dichotomy

I Warned You

Endlessly

I Hope I Share My Mother's Tenderness

An Ode to the Arches

Body Count

I Will Live Even After Death

Fuck Working to Retire

The Angels Knew About Us

Clementine Moon

Otherworldly

Pioneer

Myth: Women Need Men

Soul Contract

Timeless Vines

I Made My First Paper Airplane

The Topography of Your Collar Bones

For My Readers

How Do You Start Your Best Day Ever?

Life is Savory

Self-Published

Craving

My Soul is an Extraordinary Beast

33  44’ 53.88 N 104  56’ 9.972 W

Always Love

Art Worth Understanding

Human Hibernation

Monarch Masquerade

Vindication

A Poem for My Best Friend

Wielding A Heart

Pledge of Allegiance to Myself

Celestial Romance

Autumn Healing

Hands

Please, Love Yourself Relentlessly

To: Male Poets Who Romanticize Sad Girls

Some Kind of Magic

Thank You

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Something Borrowed, Something Blue

You’re with Someone New

I panicked when I remembered

Something you’d told me

But I couldn’t   h e a r   your voice  

It was like craving a certain song,

But finding the whole record scratched

I can’t recall the way your

Lips   h e l d   my name and the

Sheepish smile afterward

Or the dimples that followed

In the apples of your cheeks

Your body now reminds me of

An abandoned house

With a hearth harboring no warmth

And wallpaper