'Jean-Paul Belmondo' by Valzhyna Mort

Jean-Paul Belmondo*

Valzhyna Mort

it begins with your face of a stone
where lips repose like two seals

in a coastal mist of cigarette smoke

you move through the streets—

listing them

is as useless as naming waves.

                            (that city is so handsome for a reason—)you whisper:

                        it was made out of your rib)

it continues with my

          skidmarked by a dress

body. i stand on the border

on heels like my sixth toes

and show you

where to park.

that very night

lying together

                        in the dogs yard

       —flowers are biting my back!—
you whisper:

          the longer i look on the coins of your nipples

          the clearer i see the Queen’s profile.

for you, body and money are the same

as the chicken and the egg.

the metaphor of “a woman’s purse”

escapes you.

stealing, you like to mumble:

a purse is a purse is a purse is a purse.

also:

a real purse in your hand is worth

two metaphorical purses over your mouth.

they tell me

          you are a body

                        anchored to the shore by its rusting blood.

your wound darkens on your chest like a crow.

i tell them—as agreed—that you are my youth.

an apple that bit into me to forget its own knowledge.

death hands you every new day like a golden coin.

as the bribe grows

it gets harder to turn it down.

your heart of gold gets heavier to carry.

your hands know that a car has a waist

and a gun—a lobe.

you take me where the river once lifted its skirts

and God, abashed with that view,

ordered to cover that shame with a city.

its dance square

shrank by the darkness to the size

of a sleeping infant’s slightly open mouth.

i cannot tell between beggars’ stretched hands

and dogs’ dripping tongues.

you cannot tell between legs—

                    mine—tables’—chairs’—others’.

that dance square is a cage

where accordions grin at dismembered violin torsos.

beggars lick thin air off their lips.

women whirling in salsa slash you

across the chest with the blades

of their skirts soiled with peonies.

Poetry (December 2009).

[image from]
Also read 'crossword', from Poetry.

**

Sometimes I underestimate serendipity. Reading these two poems this morning just when I was asking myself what I was doing on a campus an hour from any city, with only two towns nearby, where the nothing that happens might be the subject of any one of a hundred East European films from the 70s, my day becomes more bearable.

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*Update; this post has nothing to do with the fact that the man was awarded the Palme d'Or . Just coincidence.