Three Poems
Plaque on Bench
On me your eyes on waist. You
like I decide skin
when it falls ascend you travel
the bone. Time will not of its own
accord conclude—you are
for the hours. Your tongue leaves
a trail the length of my clavicle. Dries
faster than rain. I am no road.
Met you five hours into the wet
night bar near your bedroom
door. You coil the condom round
your ring finger, say: ‘What will you do
with your guilt?’ I mentioned
my mother, who was born
and then died. I say: live with it. Ungoverned
by usual decencies you speak: ‘Don’t. Martyrs bore
me most.’ Loss the promise. By
the bar door, hello, goodbye, agreed upon.
Between my thighs nothing
new. Sun on mud smell of dried
puddles in crevices—phantom pleasure where
your fingers parted. In Fort Greene Park I walk
along lives lived to need silver plaques
nailed to benches. You want
hard metal. Rain can rain
on silver.
Absorbed
Permeates me. I boil water
for rice. They come to find me,
the eyes of carps. You explained,
years ago, to brew my green jasmine tea I
should watch ebullition. When pearls the size
of eyes of fish in river rise to surface, heat
is cool for green. Water given
sight. The sun through the kitchen window circled
lines by your temples: you resembled
the older man I still hoped
I would know. Do not boil water twice. Skin
complies: I lose you. I know
something now. You passed
through my life like knowledge,
liquid.
Against Your Ghost
Against absence you linger,
imaged, accurate to
a fault. Clean blue nights
to speak your mouth. The scar dividing
your lip the cause of accidents
I wish I witnessed. Leeching
up my tired leg. Devils in precision: the dead
proven right.
Your laughter
gave up caution along the rusted spikes
of parc Monceau, the false ruins, green
artificial pond. The river Seine the place you cried
confessing your sister’s shame.
Water I believed. I borrow
most often the first night. Red American bar, I read
to a crowd: the walls of my youth were red. You thought:
heavy hair. Would weigh it in my hands.
You leave me
black of your leather sound
of a protest Place
de la République. I watch you walk
away separated from
Paris, the day—my late service to
translucence.
Mathilde Merouani is currently pursuing an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won the John Logan Prize for poetry. Her work has appeared in The Common, Fugue, Joyland, Minor Literature, 3:AM Magazine, and The Rumpus. Her translation of Michel Butor’s essays have been published by Vanguard Editions.