Three Poems
[1]
this ours
that it be a union
of scissors: cut
the hair, the hems,
the cord that
feeds me worry with
every bite, my
secret family
line. Cut it
as if it were
uneven bangs,
the carton of
milk, the glued
pages
of a book.
*
I unwind
the wire
from the head,
a deformed hanger
that no longer
holds you up.
*
drip-dried glass
this ear:
lips remaining
only
if you look against the light.
*
harsh verses like
stitches, to
tell this story;
suture
with wire.
*
my word
a moth that
collides with light
(you, a fiber
that sizzles
preserved in a jar)
[2]
If every time that
I sweat I lost a bit of you I would be
at a good point:
you wouldn’t return to
my throat in the morning, only
as a shroud in my
sheets.
[3]
When the eye darkens
don’t search for the warmth of
the hand that lowers the eyelid,
the melody of the word escapes,
the voice that smiles at you with
redone teeth.
If language is the world, it’s
a mirror, find yourself there with
wide-open
pupils, fish there from that black
that ink that tells you the vertical
word. In its shadow questions
grow, it makes room
for the breath of thinking.
The horizontal word doesn’t
submerge,
but the white of the margins, the
break that
covers the absence between you
and me.
Translations from the Italian
By Catherine Kedala
