Joumana Haddad
Two Poems
[52]	I Don't Remember
I don't remember
that I undressed in daylight
for a man
whose eyes are closed.
I don't remember
that I was ever the running saliva,
he an unattainable desire
and I ravenous with hunger,
he an impossible bed
I the conqueror
he a resilient city
I don't remember, don't remember
that I conquered a man like a storm
and he was the open windows that faced my weakness,
that I pounced upon him like a fever
and his hallucinations swallowed my tongue
I knew men's bodies as travel
and my body as arrival and easy farewell.
I knew that men's hearts are pairs of hands, and knew my heart was a promise of asphyxiation that remains false even when it wins.
I knew that the arrival of me was a gentle flood and their departure a temporary ruin.
I knew how to forget them even as they stormed the dust of memory.
I had never known a man
whose heart professed rupture like a certain catastrophe.
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Joumana Haddad
I never knew a man who could turn me from an Eve into woman.
[53]
He resembles no one: I drew him, carved him. I made him then lost him.
I carry his silhouette under my arm at sunset and begin searching for him. No one knows him.
I gave birth to him in an hour of desperate revelation
from a hand resting on my cheek.
I raised him on easy tears and choicest words.
He is the ruler of a cursed dam,
master of an impending earth slide,
savior of my old covenant and destroyer of all future
revelations. I drew him, carved him, made him. Then I lost him.
He has no adversary.
He has deferred women since the beginning of time, singular and numerous like the sex of men, but he resembles no one.
He rose from the angles of myth,
lifted on the wings of ancient disappointments.
He leaves a land that becomes nations.
He tosses shells and they become destiny.
He adorns pain.
He follows the body with a speechless mouth
and glories in every utterance.
He praises at times, and at times denigrates,
VOLUME 4 | 2011 | SPECIAL ISSUE
Then I Lost Him
Joumana Haddad
[54]
and the gap explodes in tension, the shifting sands revolt
and everything, and everyone that hides under them.
An unhurried predator, he knows he'll win.
He seals hunger, seals it with one hand, and his other hands rove deeper than the wellsprings of pleasure, further than a defeated desire.
He is the regret that never appears in mirrors and the rescue that always arrives late.
Ah, how much pain, how much more waiting, how many more lying faces of a lover who resembles no one!
I drew him, carved him, made him in my imagination then lost him between two slumbers.
Translated by Khaled Mattawa
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