TWISTED VELVET CHAINS
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Twisted Velvet Chains is a collection of poems which follows the experiences of one woman growing up with a bipolar, drug addicted, gothic musician mother. Each poem represents specific moments of their life that embrace vivid rich imagery, and illustrate the turmoil of emotions both experience while together. The collection is divided into four parts that flow one into the other from childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and post-death.
"Twisted Velvet Chains is a vivid, unexpected gut-kick, rarely seen in poetry. Jessica Bell's voice is a terrifying mix of crying child, angry teen, and screaming adult heard inside the rock and roll tornado of abuse. Her use of music and unique form create a vibrating song of poems demanding to be heard. Readers will remember TVC 's haunting chords long after the last stanza is struck."– Alaine DiBenedetto Benard , poet and artist
“Through the poet's adept and generous use of clipped lines, staccatos, onomatopoeia, smells, and descriptions of icky body fluids, these poems tell the story of a mother and daughter hopelessly linked by love and hate. Jessica Bell doesn't let up. She is a genius at portraying the raw and dark parts of life through her use of words and where she places them on the page. This is an exciting and wonderful read.” — Madeline Sharples , author of Leaving The Hall Light On , co-author of The Emerging Goddess book of poems and photography , and co-editor of The Great American Poetry Show , Volumes 1 and 2
“A bold, unique voice, Jessica Bell's words leap into existence with the bravery of raw, vivid imagery and language aimed straight at the heart of the matter. Masterful, lyrical and haunting, Twisted Velvet Chains is a pulls no punches approach to tackling painful, delicate subject matter with a refined skill and subtle grace.” —Debbie Berk, Editor of The Stray Branch.
“In Twisted Velvet Chains you enter a landscape that is sensual and metaphysical, comic and tragic, where Gothic Neanderthals give birth to songs, and a little girl's vulnerabilities leak out from the pages. Jessica Bell is a shape shifter; explorer of childhood memories, and observer of our existential loneliness, alienation, and detachment. ‘I think it's a black hole;/ A cage of demons: women, men, children, red poppies./ Some days it's darker than others; depends on the light/ —like your dark bitter soul.' ” — Mark Van Aken Williams , Author of Circus by Moonlight and The Prophet of Sorrow .
“ Twisted Velvet Chains might best be described as a collection of fractured memories viewed through the kaleidoscope of a tortured mother-child relationship. Even if the side effects of reading may be a bit of nausea and dizziness, you can't extract yourself from Bell 's twisted poetic chains until you've read them all.” — Angie Ledbetter , Co-publishing Editor of Rose & Thorn Journal
