# 16 Béatrice Machet Cherry-Lackered Nails...

# 16  “answering” Dominique Hecq's Red (# 12)

 https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.fr/2018/04/dominique-hecq-12-red-after-melinda.html

and  after  Peter Boyle's lines  (#4)  (after Melinda Smith # 6)

"When we look in the mirror

our faces do not know us

and our hands fall asleep in their glum citadel

eyeing the chaos of a life."

…

cherry-lackered nails at her fingertips

holding somebody’s hand tight

like she’s back in childhood

when there was no boundary

and two as one was easy …

                       walking silently she wonders

what girl         for what woman to become

what woman             for what girl to forget

what man’s hand for this being on the run

drowned                   in an ocean of dreams

Peter Boyle #4 Responding to Melinda Smith #6 13 April

<starting with a line from Melinda Smith #6>

Post Howard

In his slowly rising cage

the inspector of underwater prisons

files his report to the Ministry of Hatchings

and where the script says "Abandon"

he digs his crab-like claws into

the minutiae of all dredged-up grief.

When we look in the mirror

our faces do not know us

and our hands fall asleep in their glum citadel

eyeing the chaos of a life.

What have you gathered about you?

Why these pale shards

arranged like signposts guiding the lost

to a missing waterfall?

The inspector is trapped in his gently rising cage,

in the flurry of his jacket and boots,

as the life he almost had, the parallel mansion

with its turrets, its swings and slides

and balustrades, its five-tiered gardens,

drifts downward to where the plankton feed.

A glint of light passes down the cable

showering with its sparks

the prison world below him.

However he turns the phrases

cruelty defines him.

Dominique Hecq # 12 - Red - after Melinda Smith & Co

Red

The sun, a glistening carmine clot. She daydreams, her ears plugged with Red Hot Chili Peppers. Contemplates the ruby on her finger. Takes a bit of her Royal Gala. Punches keys on her KreAtiV laptop that go clickety-click at each brush of her cherry-lackered nails. A shadow hovers above the window. She is caught red-handed.

Melinda Smith #6 the glass which is keeping... after Kerry Shying #4 (and the rest)

the glass which is keeping the air out, the workers in. He thinks nab means opportune theft

(elevenses for Kerri featuring buildings and theft)

after Kerry Shying #4 we accompany ourselves by slapping at flesh 

The April air above the office blocks is guileless blue

and too warm to trust. On the corner there is a situation, cordoned off, a jumble

of witches’ hats and high viz. The building says nab. The logo is a bloodied red star. One point

is striped with absences, sharp parallel scars, twin zebra stripes of gouge, they gesture

to the window washer, white helmeted, in his slowly rising cage, who tends to the dust. He bathes

the glass which is keeping the air out, the workers in. He thinks nab means opportune theft

Inside, on the window ledge, a dusty white peace lily calls to the white helmet. Beside it a woman

with a headset and bitten nails, her roots starting to show. Her screen says nab. She tends to it

like a duty, like dusty window, it does not always obey her instructions, there are wilful red absences

starting to show. In her mind, a dream of a day with no gouges, no glass, a portal she sails through,

opportunely, on a Vespa, in a sundress, unbereaved again, unmarked, impossible to catch.

Kit Kelen #22 - decide (for Melinda Smith)

22

decide

(for Melinda Smith - continuing our conversation) 

 

not being is a God's biggest problem

but there are many more

take gender

take createdness

a name to hide in a crime

where there's procession

there will be pitchforks and more to turn

try innocence on that

or we were never there

it's only we believe

because a truth has set us free

for which we're not responsible

have I mentioned pogroms, wars?

all in the name of love

then let me play for the fountain

till, tend, dance around the source

there is indeed a sky

I'm reading

and I am gone

a little smear of bloodless ink

forgotten in immensity

like the night before the bride

and I still want to save the world

and I still have this far in me

that all of it can be saved

let me be for you like old Hamlet's ghost

(another one who isn't/wasn't,

though we know him well)

I won't say 'swear!'

I say 'decide!'

Magdalena Ball #15 Inadequate at Full Tilt after Kerri Shying #3 no understanding comes to us like rain

Inadequate at full Tilt

after Kerri Shying #3 no understanding comes to us like rain

 

I might have opened that heavy door

ten times or less when I was younger

and here I am again

lured by the rabbit hole

the peculiar smell

brisket perhaps and linoleum

cut glass with no flowers

no one cooks brisket anymore

not that I’d know

anything about meat

she certainly doesn’t, lipstick stains still 

edging the cups, gathering dust

in the cupboard 

it never stopped raining then

gunmetal lips

feet wet in ankle-breaking platforms

but still short

still inadequate

even when the sun shone

my smile was a mask 

for breathlessness

later became habit became

asthma became a triumph of the 

prefrontal cortex

under duress

and here again

past midnight

recognising all the faces

in the photos, those pallid smiles

the waxy smell that remained 

the endless face-stinging rain

Kerri Shying # 4 following Magdalena Ball #14 In which the fractal of divinity after Michele Seminara #2 - ‘Disperse’

Kerri Shying # 4 following Magdalena Ball #14 In which the fractal of divinity after Michele Seminara #2 - ‘Disperse’

I’m pinching broken slates  from  the desecrated roof

of the old place down the road   I know your dog  the neighbour

says  her grand daughter found him   on one of his many

jaunts   visits her Chihuahua   there’s no standing under shade

right now   round here  all talking done in sunlight

we accompany ourselves by slapping at flesh

the clock  is on every conversation   she says

it isn’t theft    she watched them  throwing the

century of labour  off the roof   smashed

like the plates at a Greek wedding   but without

the joy   she helps me load them up she slaps my arm goodbye

 

Kit Kelen #21 - une façon de s’épanouir ici

21

une façon de s’épanouir ici

following Beatrice and Dominique

https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/dominique-hecq-beatrice-machet-4-field.html

so beautiful to say the flower

shall I speak till it is gone?

sun stood this mist

and sure we shone

we were bitten too

tinkle of high above us struck

how we are visited to be

some precious one was lost in a book

was a garden as well

threads broken

and a lessening of less

like language gone from me

Cui Yuwei #11- A Translated Poem of Huang Hai: In Father's Ward (After Jean Kent's 'Who is Margaret?')

Cui Yuwei #11- A Translated Poem of Huang Hai: In Father's Ward 

After Jean Kent's Who is Margaret?

Here is the link of Jean Kent: 
https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.tw/2018/01/jean-kent-2-who-is-margaret-response-to.html

In Father's Ward

Written in Chinese by Huang Hai

Translated into English by Cui Yuwei

father and I are looking at each other for a while

his eyes welling up with the limpidity of lamplight

the corners of his mouth slightly quiver

as if saying something

that I haven't caught

I come up to sit at his bedside

his penis exposed through a hole

in his hospital gown

it has never been so pliant and soft as it is today

still as an infant

then I put it back quietly

into his crotch

《在父親的病房》

黃海

我和父親對視了壹會

他的眼睛充滿燈光壹樣的清澈

他嘴角微微壹動

好像說了什麽

我沒聽清

我靠近他的病床坐下來

看到從病號服的褲孔

露出來的陰莖

從未像今天那樣

順從和柔軟

像嬰孩那樣壹動不動

我又把它悄悄塞回

父親的褲襠

Dominique Hecq - #11 - Screen, after Magdalena Ball's Fractal

Screen

your hands, working their way in and out of
the sink, twisting against the inevitable

ends of your unending love

you realise that if you were to look

                         inside

you would not be greeted with the sight 

of hammers and tongs

working on an automaton's

                        body to be

completed with wheels and springs

meant to farewell a tongue

 

                                                         displaced

from its habitation within or out

side displacement itself

Odveig Klyve # 3 Metamorphose -to Kit Kelen, Magdalena Bal, Ali Jane Smith

Metamorphose in April

Suddenly

the white is cracking,

the blue rises,

the green wakes up.

Wagtails, 

do they cross the sky

or my heart?

My dark coat, 

my thick gloves 

at the clothesline 

fly away

believing they are 

blackbirds.

Metamorfose i april

Brått

sprekk det kvite,

det blåe stig,

det grøne vaknar.

Linerler, 

kryssar dei himmelen

eller hjarta mitt?

Den mørke frakken, 

dei tjukke hanskane

på klessnora

flyr avgårde,

trur at dei er

svarttrost.