LITTLE STREET FOR SEX I live in the shopping center of the world, it’s open 24 hours. There are, for example, streets for luminous bodies, and there’s no end to the lights, lace lampshades, chandeliers, bulbs of every breed; then a street of screws and nuts, and an endless line of fish restaurants, a side […]
“Once upon a time, many moons ago, people didn’t have wings.” All the stories my mother used to tell me when I was a child started like that: harking back to an ancient and perhaps mythical time when people had not yet acquired the ability to fly. I used to love listening to those stories, […]
(excerpts from the essay collection Petit éloge des grandes villes (Small Praise for Big Cities), © Gallimard 2007) From JFK airport, Queens; the middle of an October night Rain lacerates the taxi windows. Between two sudden downpours, water runs in rivulets, blurs my view already dulled by sleep. It’s 9 p.m. (3 a.m., Paris time). Car headlights set […]
Just Following Orders With its forelegs a mantis pins down its prey there are circumstances just following orders a strip of rabbit fur by the incense burner releases the wood’s fragrance how can I warm the hearth when all the cranes fly over to the north without stopping to drink water If You Raise […]
Page 17 Don’t let me leave with little Jamie Bulger, he’s so puny and so scared. Don’t let me let go of little Jamie Bulger, he screams for his mum and wants to go home. On the guard’s monitor we are small jointed dolls in grainy black and white. Two thwarted explorers. Two embalmed children. […]
Navigating wind in the chest I walked the path between two solstices with a swarm of angels a flock of insects, miniature jaguars and the rattle of day still reverberating. Those seminal forces luring me to the honeycomb where the hummingbird and winter cicada whirred. Navigating toward high seas dad and mom are two coasts […]
No Voy a Forget Mi amor, espero que Yo recuerde the way You sound with three Buttons undone, tu voz Baja, cariñosa. Will I remember the feel De tu nombre the first time I wrapped my lips around it? When I made the exception To my rule that yo sólo Me casaría con un hombre […]
Coiffure / Hair-do The beautiful American word hair-do lacks the élan of the French word coiffure. Hair-do is flat-footed & matter-of-fact. It does what it says it does; Americans adore that. I could run hairstylist up the flagpole as a word to salute—that’s as Cadillac as our idiom gets. But Cadillac looks suspiciously French—about as […]
Papeles No tengo papeles. Así, tengo papeles— En el carro en la silla. En la casa en la mesa En el cuarto en la cama. Papeles de la corte, Papeles del avogado, Papeles del estado, Papeles de la migra. Papeles que me notan, Papeles que me representan, Papeles que me llaman y Papeles que me […]
Six Minutes One night, walking along the sidewalk that coasts a little park that is not enclosed, a park with wooden benches covered in sentences written in permanent marker, a swing on the edge of a very protective silence, in an almost residential area, enveloped (I) in the damp of an autumn that had just […]
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