The Horsetail Cribs of the Rosewood Sky
The Horsetail Cribs of the Rosewood Sky
By Joshua Chalifour
The bathers breathe girl fires
of the head, warm with anger.
A pride of the straw flowers
(I take to you twice)
drops the wolf's spell at
a beach in my princesses'
divine construction.
A yellow cuttle-fish opens up
a head and kettle,
which ringing thus, drowned
(few paddle quickly)
with women's glass hair and the
sign of pure death.
Your expression looks on;
above is the musty
tile staircase,
eye-blue for my friend.
A girl is far now but clenched
your sound with a side thought
and detained me only to
plant dummy jewels.
The star-studded air at foot
can give woes, friend,
also makes me palpable.
I am the milliner's pardon,
I ask for a chart
whose two black ferrets die
out of need I don't have.
A fist opens up smooth, flat
time then clears solar feeling
to let a red silhouette hang
on me, sing over me.
Straw Silhouette
By André Breton (translation: Jean Pierre Cauvin and Mary Ann Caws) 1
1 André Breton, “Straw Silhouette,” in Poems of André Breton: a bilingual anthology, trans. Jean Pierre Cauvin and Mary Ann Caws, 1st ed (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
To Max Ernst
Give me drowned women's jewels
Two cribs
A horsetail plant and a milliner's dummy head
Then pardon me
I don't have the time to breathe
I am a spell
Solar construction has thus far detained me
Now I can only let die
Ask for the chart
Quickly with clenched fist above my ringing head
A glass in which a yellow eye opens
Feeling also opens up
But princesses hang on to pure air
I need pride
And a few flat drops
To warm up the kettle of musty flowers
At the foot of the staircase
Divine thought whose tile is star-studded with blue sky
The expression of bathers is a wolf's death
Take me for your girl friend
The girl friend of fires and ferrets
Looks at you twice over
Smooth out your woes
My rosewood paddle makes your hair sing
A palpable sound clears' the beach
Black with cuttle-fish anger
And red on the side of the sign