Mona Zahra Attamimi 

Translator

have you still kept that knife?
don’t rinse off the blood. i still can hear that sweet groan.
you wrote in the pages of the book of love. late at nights, we’d read
the instant our raging blood boiled and gushed together
with hurried, impatient breath.

you take pleasure in being defenceless.
just like the fish that you’ve kept inside your womb -
flailing about within the pulverising strength of desire
and, the mysterious and delicate moans of your opened mouth.

have you still kept that knife?
before you arrive at the height of love, thousands of women
will unsheathe and stab you with it - wherever at the pit
of your body and on any congealed meat.

who knows where i am. whirling
inside a labyrinth. it is the longest journey
without a map. and this darkness is utterly
perfect. i grope my way through an alley flanked by a river
and a ravine.

there’s a scream, it sounds like a song. it may have
come from my mouth. i hear a moan, it sounds like
a hum. it may have come from my mouth.

but this land of alienation is utterly
perfect: your body that is scattered with worms,
i shall ignore - until i have completed this blissful
coitus and also, before i have completed stabbing
you in the heart, ripping out your cock and grating
you with every kind of pain.

i, sinta, have retreated from incinerating
myself. for the sake of holy blood
for the most cowardly man known as rama.
then i washed my body, with black blood,
warming my wild love,
and sprouting it, even in fields growing with depravity.

i chased after rahwana,
and i begged him to copulate with my breath
as it points upward to the empty sky.
i let it fly, so the hands of the cravenly,
the defeated would be incapable of reaching me.

who said my love is white? perhaps, it is dust,
or as dark as my life.
but listen to my bewitching cries,
scorching all that is sanctified and eternal.

i seized my life, not within flames
- the house of sinners,
but within the calm of the wasted and the penniless,
separating my history from the craven
and the liars. rama...

it’s like this, i’ve laid a cast-iron bed within your chest.
i’ve created narrow cracks, they are my love-chamber.
one day, it’ll be crammed with songs and tears.
a soft moan, a startling scream. and you’ll send me
away to a foreign land - with a bang and the sound
of the wind on your breath.

it’s like this, i’ve laid a garbage-can within your brain.
i’ve created clumps of matter, they are the wasted corner.
one day, it’ll be crammed in with what’s left over. by now that
narrow space is suffocating with stories and calamities.

moments ago, we were deceived by love. you blasted me
with your cock. i’ve laid the worms there. when the time
comes, be ready for them to prune the leaves of your heart.

this is how we were: a future laced with hopes and promises.
one day – within your brain, within your chest, within
your abdomen – i’ll plant the carcasses of worms. one day,
you will harvest the butterflies.

when i married you, i silenced my need for your fidelity.
you then changed and became my obedient slave.
this world that i own i built on a hill of stones
and a field of blady grass. you ploughed it, turning the land fertile
and i harvested while hauling around my sniffling lust.
i have a thousand wild beasts, i’ll use them as soldiers
that will stalk and imprison you.
and, the bamboos i had planted will be made into spears and blades.

run as far as your cocky, macho strides can take you, man!
hide in your mother’s armpits,
read the body language and the growth
of saplings in the greenhouse: tell me how to erect a dwelling
and build walls without doors - the prison of my offerings
that you had read in your own tongue.

i married you but not for your fidelity.
i’ve tolerated the wars waged with myself at each battlefield.
i am the commander of a troop of the wildest beasts
-who are always lusting after you, as they ogle
you at the dining table.

for now let me hold you,
before i heed and end my dire hunger.