Geneva
Translated by Emilie Moorhouse
From my bed I imagine the strange quiet of the graveyard. I fidget at the thought of spilled blood; my cheeks burn, my foul teeth bite the slippery harpoon of dementia and I moan in the dark like a flattened crayfish.
A tuft of your hair lurches on my tomb. My chest is chapped by a thousand wavelets, restless; I think I hear the screams of our parents, those tapeworms without opacity even in pain—who crisscross the alleys with sullen mossy walls, they scream and lament, spreading my spasmic delight all the way to the back of the garden. Beautiful garden with pinecone silences, with marble and octopus dreams, with cockroach spells and soft womanly smells. I will crush my cigar in your eye poached by late nights, I will crush your penis with my tired heel, I will crush you completely in the stench of my refusal.
Your voice breaks the divide. You’re complaining. My vagina tightens. To be touched, and then to wait ...
Translated from the French
Notes:
Read the French-language original, “Genève.”
This poem is part of “When Can I See You Again: The Poetry of Joyce Mansour,” translated by Emilie Moorhouse. You can read the rest of the portfolio in the June 2023 issue. All the English translations of Joyce Mansour’s poems are from Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems, edited by Emilie Moorhouse and Garrett Caples. Translations copyright © 2023 by Emilie Moorhouse. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books. For more information, visit www.citylights.com.
Source:
Poetry
(June 2023)
