A jersey skirt
between the belly and the gray day.
The Eiffel Tower cries electricity.
On Mirabeau Bridge, a woman strokes the fabric
thinking of the passing minutes,
the year’s deaths
in her journal
crossed out by ball-point pen
beneath it, the belly
feels her fragility
curtains of birds
come and go along the sky’s bias
she would like to entrust her small sack of entrails to them
to no longer be
any more than a look, luminous and naked, like the Tower.
“Qu’un regard,” © Marie-Claire Bancquart. Originally published in Avec la mort, quarter d’orange entre les dents, Obsidiane, 2005. Translation © Christina N. Cook, 2014. All rights reserved.
