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Issue 14 • Summer 2005 • Featured Lodestar Writer • Poetry
Jean Sénac,
translated from the French by Justin VicariThe Virgins Are Giving It Up
The virgins are giving it up to the Great Orgy of the Reeds.
Lips (wetted by death) gorged with words
They will give birth to the thousand sons of the Bastard race.
I tell you the sun will turn green
And sing through the translucent skin of their immaculate bellies
AegoO! AegoO!
AAAAAAA. . . .
Is everything truly fucked -- the administrative committees, laughter, our hard-ons?
I mean everything?
(The Chenoua is in hiding; on mainstreets the beardless carry pieces of him in their jeans.)
Death is all that's left to set life back on its feet.
Even tarted-up with dewdads
How lovely was the Revolution in her heat!
She's lost her man. She hurls herself down
Between two tuinols -- and me too.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Pricks. Cunts. I've met a lot of pricks and cunts.
Where is man?
Did the woman perish in the last blitzkriegs?
JAAAAAAAAAA. . .
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacques!
The pines and firs, the nettles undersea
Detonate their fruit. Jaaaaaaaacques!
The dream-asleep-in-the-woods is snoring. Our guitar
Lures the settlers deep into the forest. Your Volkswagen
Is not amphibian. I have loved nothing
But to wreck against the blue
BLUE space of solitude
-- O watery negation, Mother!)
From the splintered planks of my little boats
I have built the flagship.
Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacques, it's going down!
BSM Pointe-Pescarde, August 23, 1967
Next Page:
The Raft of the Medusa (page 7 of 18 pages)
All Pages: See all the poems on one page
Table of Contents: The Myth of the Mediterranean Sperm
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Jean Sénac was a teacher, soldier, and writer. He was the author of numerous collections of poems, including Citoyens de beauté and Jubilation, and one novel, Ébauche du père: pour en finir avec l'enfance. Following the Algerian revolution, he worked in the Ministry of Education in Algeria and for Radio-Algiers with a daily program, Poésie sur tous les fronts. He was the founder of the magazines Soleil, Terrasses, and cofounder of Galery 54. He was murdered, possibly because of his political beliefs, in August 1973 in Algiers. More information (in French): French Wikipedia: Jean Sénac.
Justin Vicari's work appears or is forthcoming in Interim, Rhino, Eclipse, Slant, Spillway, Gin Bender Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Third Coast, Disquieting Muses Quarterly, Softblow, and other reviews. He is the author of chapbooks "In a Garden of Eden" (Plan B Press) and "Woman Bathing Light to Dark" (forthcoming from Toad Press, 2006). In 2005, one of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
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Go To:
Issue 14 or Lodestar Quarterly home page
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