In our first Translation Tuesday feature for the new year, revel in two outrightly explosive and psychedelic poems by the Belgian poet, novelist and philosopher Véronique Bergen. “I petal blue,” is how Bergen begins one of these poems and it is in this frenzied flowering of one’s subjectivity that we meet the speaker in their radiant and radical metamorphosis. Following her own warped and dynamic syntax, Bergen’s poems lay bare an “orgy of guns”: she construes a poetic world that riots our senses and, in her turbulent re-contextualisation of the technologies that engender this anarchy, refracts a history of global violence. Always, they combust with a frank and freakish sexuality. Translated by our very own Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, MARGENTO brings to our readers the spectrum of technicolour brilliance and virtuosic world-building that is Bergen’s verse.
Suave Blue
I petal blue
looking for the way out of my maze
safe behind the bat my effigy
I curaçao
at the bottom of a swimming pool
in search of Isabelle A. of a Gin Cloud
inhaling vapors
of methylene blue
to deoxidize my moths
In the hollow of my sex
my sunken Atlantis
the Amazon of Mytilene
rapes me Lesbos earthquake
a touch of futuristic pornography
to stifle
my desire to sink
among water lilies
where Opheliacs drift
My mission is
to bleed out my blue blood
daily autistic drip
at the time when the sun
deviates into indigo
Periwinkle-colored
death
will have Isabelle A.’s eyes
an amniotic liquid
released from a cosmic uterus
will flow over my wounds
Yves Klein’s patented Tuareg blues.
Dirty Banditry Hour
Capital Execution
would you like it in black and white crystalline powder
or technicolor pills?
The syringe between your teeth
stereophonic host
for a reality check
who does what
who empties the septic tanks
shoots the rainbow
From the magazine to the barrel
the same current is flowing through the revolver
long cartridges slipped under the tongue
loaded with electromagnetic whisky
The boa girl, smoke lens glasses, bare shoulders
is going to blow up the world’s leadership
decapsulate the tragedy of the spheres
her chain necklace says “yes” to the finger squeezing the trigger
her naked flesh a trap
the new Salome shoots the way we love doing it
point-blank range
firing a life-giving bullet
in the backs of the heads of order apostles
a poppy bullet spouting out
lost weapons undergrowth
Never forget to say
to heaven and earth
yin and yang
who does what
what nerd gives him the heads-up
on the dum-dum bullet rain
on a hero-in shoot-
up white as a fucking shroud
Never forget
in strip poker
blue orgasm cards lose
chemical mutations in language
give birth to counter-letters
The orgy of guns
overlooks the primal void
in the ocean of tattoos
sea urchins shaped like fully loaded syringes
The Cosa Nostra label
explodes in anarchy
words give way to great irreversible acts
devolution to childhood
gray gruel with thorns
I take an oath
to repatriate to the stars
anything that obstructs
spleen mud
I take an oath
to rape with a bullet
the orifices of dawn
to give to poems
the sap of guerrillas
In the boat of days
night is endless
the night of Too Late
has your muscular torso
your Byzantine bruises
the look that stops the music of Brownings
of Magnums and Berettas
The night is crawling on all fours
crushed by an improvised gang bang
seduction on the rocks
of the boa girl
drinking the ink
flowing from her dancing partner’s lips
wounded by the dogs of death
Rorschach test
the scenes you read
in my blood spillage
exhibiting your apocalypse-stoned future
heist of the century
my tongue in your mouth
enveloped in religiously atomic tequila
Los Alamos of fissile banditry
if you Nagasaki me crackers
I’ll paint the martyrs in last robbery’s colors
The gang of six mercenaries
point their guns at a world that deserves other lives
and steals our dreams, petrifying them into nightmares
The barbed wire at the end
cut off by the last shoot-up’s axis
just flip the image
like a tiger chasing its hunter
to see the made in Babylon lace
drawn by the impact of sockets
Never forget
that a Yakuza smile
pierces
the fallen angels it encounters
Never forget
to hunt the dragon
in the samurai area
Lady Heroin’s blade
across the orphan vein
The night pirouettes on its tiptoes
and opens her womb to your tears.
Translated from the French by MARGENTO
Véronique Bergen was born in Brussels where she lives to this day. She is a writer, poet, philosopher, member of the Academy of French Literature (Belgium). Among her latest publications are: the essay collections Martha Argerich, L’Art des passages (Ed. Samsa) and Portier de nuit Liliana Cavani (Les Impressions nouvelles); works of fiction Ludisme précédé de Gainsbourg et Bambou (Le Cormier) and Icône H., Hélène de Troie (Onlit); and the poetry collection Alphabets des loups (Le Cormier).
MARGENTO (Chris Tănăsescu) is a poet, academic, and performer. He is currently working—together with John Taylor—on a computationally assembled Belgian poetry anthology. MARGENTO is Asymptote‘s Romania & Moldova Editor-at-Large.
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