Kināyah
“[concerning] women, the sexual organs, defecation, various forms of
uncleanliness and everything which is a bad omen” –Sandra Naddaff“when a woman desires something, no one can stop her” –The Thousand
and One Nights
her “slit”
different forms of discourse
basil of the bridges
in the interests of narrative variety
we move away from the door
(threshold
spying a black juniper couch, a girl—
already
probity
signaling possibility
pool and fountain beckon
set with gems and pearls
metaphor
a realm entirely other: we must
learn its rules
“metonymy”
necessary enigma
speech comports as sex
penetrating her remark
her bearing
like an alef
fullness of her belly
her text
a body (em-
bodied) scroll of a book
ours
“speak not of what concerns you not”
yet how construct
a meaningful translation
privileging the narrative universe
she forestalls death
“stroke your head and go”
Chinese spheres
embedded mirrors, leaves
fictions
an appropriate ransom for a life
both forestalling and inviting
a ritual multiplicity
the number 8 recurs
pressure of repetition, inescapable
she twists the strands
sections
her own long hair
A night of gloom before a dawn of joys
undoes linearity
time
turning back on itself
we
are returned to the beginning
a moment
just preceding
the law of conservation
women’s desires
her ifrit is instrumental
their losses
compensated against the un-
anticipated
(heretical)
a specifically feminine space
appropriation of power
driving
against the status quo
a number without count
neither nights nor
days matter
anti-mimetic
alternation a form of
emendation
composing her own
source and design
:: radical metamorphoses
animating the lifeless
endless and exact multiplication
a petrified city
hers an
arabesque composed of words
lineaments
of the future assured
