Sunday, September 10, 2017

In the Perfumed Juice


—Anonymous Photo


    The fruits you give me are more savory than others, their aroma brings me something of you.
    I ate them again on your mouth, where I recaptured their flavor, with provoking kisses, in the perfumed juice of blue plums.
    You held my hands and our lips were fresher than the centers of fruit bursting with ripeness; hard nuts cracked between our teeth; your eyes were laughing, but suddenly they grew dark, and you bit the ripe raspberries at the tips of my inflamed breasts.
    If one day you must tear my heart to pieces, Sylvius, as you rend apart the blond pulp that summer lavishes on us, don’t bother to sharpen the blade that sparkles on the wall in the house, take it with your bare teeth, tear it out and let my blood pour out of my open heart, more sparkling than the bright blood that swells through the currants.

—Marguerite Burnat-Provins, 1872-1952 (trans. from the French by Cassia Berman)

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For more about European poet and painter Marguerite Burnat-Provins, go to books.google.com/books?id=2Wf1SVbGFg8C&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=Marguerite+Burnat-Provins+biography&source=bl&ots=QXgzE_IzsB&sig=Fd9EAq2_RSYFEnrNOPocGq-hM6g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTlKu_v5jWAhVIzFQKHerPBeU4ChDoAQhGMAU#v=onepage&q=Marguerite Burnat-Provins biography&f=false/ (scroll up a bit).

For more about her artwork, see thebluelantern.blogspot.com/2014/02/from-art-nouveau-to-hallucination.html/.

—Medusa


 Autoportrait of Marguerite Burnat-Provins, c. 1900
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