The Moon
Pretty Redhead

Translated by Kate Purkhardt, Lucie Brisson and the author

 
I.
 
Listen. Nothing. It is only the night
beating in my ears. I had thought for a moment
I heard crying. I thought I heard
something strange above me coming closer.
It is nothing. Only the house around me.
Only my children sleeping.
 
 
 
II.
 
Bombs into blood and bone. What a way
to celebrate Christ. What a way
to cross a threshold, to mark a millennium,
to close or open a door, to punctuate time.
But then again, why not?

 

 
Yellow Sparrowhawk

Translated by David Van de Kamp and the author

 
The window's aflame with sunset,
but she isn't looking or really there.
She floats above the couch,
a hypnotist standing by
to catch her dreams. She's shivering,
afraid to close her eyes at night:
Will her lids burn, her images escape,
her eyes fly away, a pair of yellow sparrowhawks?
The wakeful hypnotist falls asleep at last.
She drifts, the room too small to detain her.
She dreams of flying naked through the air,
unhindered by all the paraphernalia
of who she is.
 
 

______________

 

AMARI HAMADENE, an Algerian writer, has been published in magazines and anthologies in France, Belgium and Switzerland, including Phreatique, Le Jardin D'Essai, Parages, Hauteurs, Estuaires, Archipel, Le Fram, Bleu DEncre, and Liaison. Amari writes, "Algeria in particular, and the third-world in general doesn't have [the] exclusivity to produce terrorists, epidemics and hollow and starved stomachs . . . poetry and art are there to cover [what] remains to save."