Graph
Night as snowflakes comes to land on my eyes
Comes to erase our olden days
Heavy like some St Jean Bosco bells
Each imprint carries within itself
Our moist, malignant memoirs
Our vows of silence also
Graphe
La nuit comme des flocons vient se poser sur mes yeux
Vient effacer nos vieux jours
Lourds comme les cloches de Saint Jean Bosco
Chaque empreinte porte en elle
Nos biographies malignes et moites
Nos voeux de silence aussi
Written by Marie Ange Claude
Translated by Blaise Anténor
Reviewed by Chantal Kénol
Thickness
My words have lost some weight
They slim up like sea water
That slips between my crazy toes
The night stumbles upon my nostrils
Seeking your scent
On all the bougainvillea leaves
I feel empty
Naked
Deep inside me
The time has come
To get dressed in your blue gaze
And fill myself up like the sea
Tomorrow is Sunday
Another day
Longer than May
Noisier than the rustling of stars
Another Sunday
My skin will be missing you
For yet a very long time
Already the fifth month of the uncertainty calendar
My lips have lost the taste of naked nights
Heartache opens for us
Its windows pierced by moon rays
Not a word has escaped from your silent lips
Not a single syllable
Not a vowel
Not a consonant
There will be as much boneless flesh
From silence as from memory
Epaisseur
Mes mots ont perdu du poids
Ils maigrissent comme la mer
Qui glisse entre mes orteils fous
La nuit marche sur mes narines
Qui cherchent ton odeur
Sur toutes les feuilles de bougainvillier
Je me sens vide
Nue
Au fond de moi-même
Le moment est venu
De m’habiller de ton regard bleu
Et de me remplir comme la mer
Demain sera dimanche
Encore un jour plus long
Que le mois de mai
Plus bruyant que le bruissement d’étoiles
Un autre dimanche
Tu manqueras à ma peau
Pour très longtemps encore
Déjà le cinquième mois du calendrier des incertitudes
Mes lèvres ont perdu le goût des nuits nues
Le chagrin nous ouvre
Ses fenêtres trouées par des rayons de lune
Pas un mot arraché à ton silence
Pas une syllabe
Il y aura autant de chair désossée
au silence qu’au souvenir
Marie-Ange CLAUDE was born in Deschapelles, Haiti. She pursued undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics (FLA) and at the National Institute of Management and International Studies (INAGHEI), both faculties of the State University of Haiti. She was the third recipient and first woman laureate of the René Philoctète poetry prize, in December 2018 for her manuscript "Kaskad peyi" (My Country’s Waterfalls) of which 500 copies will be published by the National Book Directorate. Moreover, she was nominated for the international poetry competition “La différence” (The Difference) of the 2020 edition of the Maurice Koné prize. Marie-Ange Claude is a member of L’Atelier Jeudi Soir (The Thursday Night Workshop), a collective of Haitian writers. Some of her poems were published in "Les Cahiers du Jeudi Soir", a monthly publication in the columns of the national newspaper Le Nouvelliste. Some other poems were published in 2015, in the Anthologie des poètes de l'Atelier Jeudi Soir (Anthology of the poets of the Atelier Jeudi Soir). She also contributed to the collective work On n'assassine pas un poète (A Poet Can’t Be Killed), a tribute to the Haitian writer Willems Edouard, published in 2018 by the Jebca publishing house and, in 2020, to a special edition of the Haitian Magazine of Critical Literature and Social Theory Demanbre, devoted to the poet Georges Castera. Furthermore, her work is featured in many recent publications, such as Haïti face à la covid-19: Entre résilience et créativité (Haiti Facing Covid-19: between Resilience and Creativity), September 2020; The Magazine Do Kre I S: Trace(s)/Mak (Trails), 2021; Anthologie Voix des îles (Anthology Voices of the Islands), 2021; Voix de femme: anthologie féminine de poésie contemporaine (Women Voices: Feminine Anthology of Contemporary poetry), 2021. At last, some of her poems are to be published during the summer of 2021 in a collection which will be comprised of the works of the nominees and laureates of the international poetry competition La différence.