winter water blue melt backlit
life suddenly in thin chemise
steadfast
in questions and old silences
in the puzzle of proper nouns
and barking city: February
slow eyelashes that beckon to love
and spinning tops
foliage of word for word
gentleness that evades meaning
plunge into the dark
with metronome
crabs eels intestines
legs and antennae
destiny you said it
from memory
with a single verb
the thousand and one possibilities of the toe, the foot
the ankle
images in the subway glued to each other
faces pressed against the whys
the saliva the fingernails
it all goes beyond
adverbs and bones
the future the future
naked things design
audacity vertical
a woman in panties
half-spoken surrounded
by syntax and paintings
dark eyebrows
a starlet sings
an amphetamine clenched in her teeth
fire close to dying
at the edge of a forest
kiss that counts
someone standing
before an accident
of cars and fiction
under the eyelid:
time’s measuring tape
dust in equilibrium
peoples and their signatures
their faces more alive
than crabs and pigeons in the shade
of cherry trees
poetry drawn back from daring
fiction if you ask me
hazelnut: image of an old
tomb with a squirrel
a photo repeated that sparks a taste
for pleasure with a grain of salt
on the tongue
a photo repeated
a stack of selves archived
big blue armchairs
their cloth arms worn down
by memory and odours
that intoxicate. Retina,
adjust your thoughts
emergency staircase on a slant
with slow blue flung at the sky
window and woman smiling
the rust the steel, broken panes
of America the colour of graffiti
then in slow motion: tulips appear
spinal cord
strange archives
on the iron rails
of a century the mud
of a day the immensity
Sombre: night flower
or calculated shadow
brief flame: hypothesis
Feinte speak reflection
seen through glasses
all words are ribbons
reading lèvres micro
i know the answer
poems that demand we open
the fire the heart: devour me
palace and ice
parentheses ( duvet )
orange, epidermis
pillowcases
i beg of you: answer
birds pepper-coloured
a flight of silence with clouds
distant. I retrace my steps
touch here a woman’s arm
tiny algae that enter
gastronomy
blue water imbued water
always another beginning
the lemon the martini the olive
all that amuses
then came night with its lampshades
describe the light
touch tomorrow
the immense everyday furled in the iris
a morning
of found orchids
Copyright © 2007 by Robert Majzels and Erín Moure (translators), Notebooks of Roses and Civilizations by Nicole Brossard, Coach House Books
Apparition of Objects
the French written by Nicole Brossard