[My room needs no calendar]

Extrait de: Wild Girls, Wicked Words
Production audio: Haus für Poesie / 2016

[My room needs no calendar]

There are no windows at all
in my room which sleeps just one.
 
Does the  sun rise on the left?
Is the moon shining overhead?
I don’t worry about any of it.
 
What connection can there be
between offering your body
and knowing what time it is?
 
I never keep track
of the time, or my body,
or the tally of men who visit me.
 
When they take my clothes off,
I must pretend that
I am bashful and
groan in pleasure.
 
As they write on me
with their penises,
I will my body to stop
from slithering away.
 
In the bruised, red toothmarks
they freeze their frothing sperm.
 
At all such moments,
I yearn for the caress
of a season when the days
and nights that gobble up
my proud youth are over.
What should I teach my children
asleep in the room downstairs?
 
It’s easy to teach them to
consort with and train animals.
That’s what I’m doing.
 
My children keep pestering
 me to blow up the condoms
lying scattered on the floor
of my room that needs no calendar.

Translated by Lakshmi Holmström