Susana Araújo

Closed-Circuit Televisions

If he touched my hand again
the breasted skin by the knuckles
would exhale back the grains
and black birds would come
to reclaim the tenses
I mixed up with a fork
like the first rice

I know that scissors of steel
cut through and across the skies
seam stresses of
pitiless paper dolls
multiplied into thousands
of siamese trabeculae, lost
souls of past perfect sand
nothing other in my hands

In the shores of banality and bad dreams
travelling with the shape of things, surface
along with millions attached to their chains
from lakes of desked death in foreign telephone centres
speaking English in tongues too far, fast and late
while we sleep, while respect is a fifty pound fine
to dress up the father, the mother and the food
while the foam of holy health will rule
edify and tell apart

So if they divide green heart and lungs
already apart
I will breathe again and against will
breath is an empty hand
which will not feed but will call back the blind
Cormorants nesting on close circuit
televisions in Ovingdean.


Copyright © Susana Araújo, 2007.

Susana Araújo is originally from Lisbon, but now lives in Brighton and teaches in the Dept. of American Literature at the University of Sussex. [As of late 2008 Susana was back in Lisbon, teaching at the University.]