DOMAIN OF THE STICKY FOLLOWED BY SIX RESPONSES TO JEAN-BAPTISTE PARA by Hélène Sanguinetti, translated from the French by Ann Cefola

Everywhere, perfect cordiality – too much sometimes, a series of smiles, bows, FUCK! CROW! Once more I feel the devastating breath go up go up, grabbing what it can within, it can the tiger!

By the lake the yellow irises play swords with the hot wind, it stinks, outside and inside. You laughed at the Mute, the Mute’s return. The cast-iron bell, born in cotton, remained cotton. They asked me, “Do you have an image that weighs on you?” What to tell them? THIS?

– No. I need rest. Calm. To be able to walk in nature.

– Enjoy the park then. There are deer, lots of squirrels – and wild mushrooms right now, if you collect them?

To hear them, it’s so easy to live that you wonder why you never thought about it before.

○

My find from earlier: ♠️ = ❤️ everything like ↓ = ↑

Question of point of view.

“You’re not becoming an optimist?” I hear you.

○

I take one day after the other, to tell the truth they take me, I listen to Brahms sonatas, one notably and without ceasing, absolutely lyrical and tender, suddenly more than violent, how we can love that sometimes while waiting for what will never happen, the impossible, these are romantic passages in all respects, which leave a young man disheveled on the rock before the sea or on the tower top.

Or in the court tales that still enchant me.

Dame, I said then, I'm coming for you, but I'm not yet the knight you think. How to become him? Good kind Sire, she replies, would he really be mine, do you really believe such a thing, as you say, when it comes to touching my skin what is going on inside? Inside has been outside since I was born. On my face, everything is there, written and painted.

I say: Dame, right now, I hate all expression, all reading, all interpretation, and everything related to it, near or far. I only seek a line that gets up and leaves.

She answers: then, kind Sire, do not stay here. This is not your country. Go far where I know nothing.

○

You didn’t understand the puzzle!?: ♠️ = ❤️ . Spade = upside-down heart. Or almost, subtracting the color and foot. Color for joy, and foot for that which scrapes and attaches ropes, cannonballs. That was yesterday and I was breathing better.

○

2 magpies hop in the “masters” orchard, they could carry away my heart. And finding him in front of the door, would you recognize it? The dead swift found yesterday on the sidewalk, or the all-white butterfly, landing alone on a brilliant lavender, what is a heart?

○

Evenings I walk.

I invent steps in the street, I become a dancer.

Plouououtplououtplouout I have a beak, in my throat I pick up the newborn.

Cranial cloud, hey, scatter! come down or I'll go up there.

Don’t hold back the horses.

○

I'm writing you. You hear me? Does she hear me, Doeshearme, you hear me? and hop there, I’m there.

By the salt lake. Red is desired. Very desired, Long-awaited.

An immense lacquered red, thick – write on it, in white, 3 white claws landed, several times, or a long, fat trail of bears, bear paws.

I turn around ﺎ On the burning sand, mute: it’s her, yellow-ringed, ocher yellow, and red, which questions and searches. Why does she open her beak so many times like she lacks air? or is she bawling so I cannot hear, no one can? “Do you want her to recognize you, no, a seagull has no memory.”

Fuck!

A single leg – one of its dangling wings, dirty from scraping the ground – waits – planted.

I threw her a cheese crust that she catches in air, gobbles up. In hope of more. They are right of course. There to eat. Me, to make myself feel.

Fishermen arrived, she fled and flew away, how to guess if she’s missing a flipper?

They do not fish but wait, the lovely sea around their bellies.

The lighthouse can be recognized from a distance, very straight and white body, black head. Tireless sea calls. I'm going to drink before swimming. The sky became very pure and the wind dropped.

I was a gazelle one summer day, cracked rock, air that I was,

Author and translator bios:

A contemporary French poet who lives in Arles, Hélène Sanguinetti has also published Jadis, Poïena (Flammarion, 2025), Cargo Bleu Sur Fond Rouge (Lanskine, 2025), Et voici la chanson (Lurlure, 2021), reprinted from L’Amandier, 2012; Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008), Alparegho, Pareil-à-rien (Comp’Act, 2005; second edition L’Amandier, 2015), D’ici, de ce berceau (Flammarion, 2003), and De la main gauche, exploratrice (Flammarion, 1999).

Ann Cefola’s translations of Sanguinetti have appeared as Alparegho, Like-nothing-else (Beautiful Days Press, 2025), The Hero (Chax Press, 2018), and Hence, this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007). Her most recent poetry collection is When the Pilotless Plane Arrives (Trainwreck Press, 2021); and she is the recipient of a Witter-Bynner Translation Residency, and Robert Penn Warren Award selected by John Ashbery.

© Hélène Sanguinetti. Translation © by Ann Cefola. All rights reserved.

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