From the collection Elle. A review of Laura Fisco’s poetry collection Elle is available in the Interviews and reviews of this issue. Cover art by Laure Keyrouz, Maryam’s pants.
Red
Red,
like sorghum flowers
and the ruby of pomegranate seeds,
it’s love.
Either grey or silver,
like stones flying under the sun,
in the sun.
One, two,
an army.
A crowd of mouths wide open and hands trying to take aim,
blinded by power and light,
rants.
Huddled in a hole,
trying to protect their heads.
They hope to succeed.
They fail.
Red,
like sorghum flowers, pomegranate seeds, the ruby
from the forehead, from the nape of the neck, from the lips
it’s love.
Teenagers who Cupid strikes making their hearts beat for a guy.
Wrong! because he belongs to someone else.
Or because he didn’t please brothers, fathers, cousins.
Stoned,
in a day which seemed festive,
with people pushing to get in the square to watch.
And others are killed, disinherited, repudiated, hanged from trees,
walled up alive at home, or sent to psychiatrists
and even made victims of collective rapes
because she loves a her.
And he loves a him.
Or because they write, laugh, polish their nails, travel, study at the university,
want to dress
as they wish, to work,
to be teachers.
(translated from italian by Laura Fusco and Alan Dent)
Lying in the lamplight
In all the languages of the world they smile at the night
lit by moonlight stroking gardens.
Until the sound of morning rises,
in the small frames of every window,
and landscapes and plants return from the dark
causing thoughts to glide.
The sky-haired girl,
bearing the adventure of the soul’s anxiety,
of not accepting this now,
and the girls who thirst for everything,
anger, outrage, fire, imagination
speak with the breath of flowers,
become indignant and shine
in the wind, as restless as they are.
They can’t be held back.
They burn.
They yearn to see it.
Touch it,
inhabit it,
be part of it.
But if they don’t see the future
other girls will.
Because dreams need no evidence
and the time for them to come true is already running out,
no matter whether struggling in streaming,
in the streets to loudly claim it,
or teaching, sewing, cooking, studying, loving, writing.
They breathe it and unbeknownst to them learn.
That in burning forests and the spill-poisoned waters of the world
what is broken always resumes its song.
And, to do it, you have to be young,
speak the language of spring,
that blooming from nothingness that asks no one’s permission,
with anger fire outrage
imagination.
Joy.
(translated from italian by Pina Piccolo)
Laura Fusco, poet and stage director active mostly in France and Italy, has been translated into 5 languages and published in the US, UK, Europe and Argentina. Her publications include Aqua nuda (2011), Da da da (2012), La pesatrice di perle (2015), Limbo (Unicité 2018), Liminal (Smokestack Books, 2019 English PEN Translates Award), and Nadir (Unicité 2020). She has performed her poems in various countries and festivals and they are studied in universities and music conservatories.
Her collection Nadir (Smokestack, 2022) is the sequel to Limina (Smokestack Books 2020) which was a recipient of the PEN (UK) Translates Award 2019. The first collection powerfully represented the experiences of migrants in camps in France and Italy. Nadir has a focus on migrant children.
