Cities really
“stroking palm and fist to hide / the smell of fear, the daily instinct”
cities in water up to their waist
until the morning’s slow and languid destruction
your smile which stretches so far back
that to emerge will finally be
a useful and strident verb
________________
cities suspended above the hours
with their renaissance eyelids
their tricks for healing
chasing the dog the monkey
into museums
stroking palm and fist to hide
the smell of fear, the daily instinct
Known for her sensual, queer poetics, Nicole Brossard writes in an elliptical style in these poems from her series “Villes.” These cities are not realistic, rather they’re unfamiliar and uncanny. The lack of specificity suggests an obscured but unforgotten past, and a quest “to meet the horizon the day after the horizon.”
