Rien
Rien.
Rien à dire.
Rien à manger.
Rien à foutre.
Rien.
Nothing
Nothing.
Nothing to say.
Nothing to eat.
Nothing to fuck.
Nothing.
—————–
Veuillez m’excuser pour ce retard
Je cours dans les couroirs.
Perdre la vie plutôt que son train.
Mes bas ont filé.
Les escaliers m’ont cassée
de la gueule aux talons.
Je cours dans les couroirs.
Le train me talonne, le train m’a prise.
Par les cheveux,
je cours dans les couroirs.
Une plainte dépasse mon portefeuille.
Ne pas toucher. Ne pas toucher.
Pour échapper.
Mon pied se transforme en main courante.
Le corps se vide
comme un camembert oublié
je coule dans les couloirs
Please Excuse Me For Being Late
I run in the running lane,
To lose my life rather than the train.
My tights are torn.
The stairs have broken me
from mug to heel.
I run in the running lane.
The train stalks me, has seized me.
By the hair,
I run in the running lane.
A complaint sticks out of my purse.
Don’t touch. Don’t touch.
To escape.
My foot transformed, a running hand.
The body empties
like a forgotten Camembert.
I spill into the swimming lane.
——————
Ventre
Mon ventre.
Nombril du vide.
Voûte céleste qui s’écroule en un tremblement de chair.
Womb
My womb.
The belly button of emptiness.
Celestial vault crumbling in an earthquake of flesh.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty three books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions. He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com
Katia-Sofia Hakim is a French poet, critic, translator, and musicologist. She is a member of the editorial board of Place de la Sorbonne, an international poetry magazine published by the Sorbonne University Press (SUP). Professeur agrégé of music and doctoral student in musicology, she teaches at the Sorbonne University.