White Piano. Nicole Brossard

of peoples in flight,

       city legs knees hurry up cited

      then hope of superstition

       a comfort of the end of the world

      out there a rich foam of intimate life

       spelled sky that thunders right up to the pupils

       too much love and not enough

       afterward we say it’s the North

       and we go to bed with a woman

       in the silence slow foliage

       we sleep right through the night

       without punctuation or sepulchre

       in the machine to inundate the world

       suddenly I’m where the wind begins

       I’d like to understand

       mammals, the humanity that runs

       in the veins

       the hand-to-hand combat of grief

       the drowned world the images of farewell

       how our lips

       and the huge side of the sea

      other times it’s suspicious I become

       a generation a vine

      a cascade of shadows and of dialogues

      Hotel Furama, L.A.

      in the lounge white piano

       a work in imagination

       curled fingers centred over the keyboard

       no night can live up to night and its story

      Hotel Furama

       the dictatorship rose up

       all blue, all night

       nuggets of interdiction

      it would be dark

       in a mirror at night it would be impossible

       to lean close. To open our arms

      every morning in the name of small survivals

       the bougainvillea climb up to our knees;

       later in the belligerent gleam of muscular

       limos, we examine the ego