Issue 25: Zoë Brigley Thompson
Aubade After a French Movie
Tomorrow’s film will be an act of love.
—Francois Truffaut
Sexuality reaches into something very beautiful. It's the duty of a filmmaker to show that this is not impure or ugly. Only artists can see that pornography is only a commercial invention of sex.
—Catherine Breillat, 2008.
That night if you’d wanted,
she would have let you
fuck her. You knocked
into each other
quite unexpectedly & something
cracked
open, set free
after that. Dear troublemaker, she writes,
if you were here with me, I’d
run my lips over
each part of you, kiss
every inch. Remember
the French film, La Fille Sur Le Pont, where the lovers
are separated but go on
talking in their heads? If I feel close,
it’s because I am, but under a black veil.
So much that is erotic
about lace... so much that is
intimate about stone. How clever
sculptors are, revealing in marble nudes
what we are not allowed
to see as we go about
our days. A veil can both
hide & reveal
a woman’s sex, might suggest
what we usually
cover. She woke before anyone else
that morning & sat
in the garden
with the shriek
of blue jays. Yesterday
was a blue bridge, a river & you
walking towards her & how shy
she was when the breeze rushed
under the velvet of her skirt, across her thighs, desire
carried like a sharp
intake of breath. Then there was no peace
without your body
across hers, no peace at all
unless you lay over & under
& with her. Being completely honest
was both the easiest & hardest
thing in the world & you gave her
such feelings. Here
it begins: with Eros as trouble but
still it draws you. When
you wanted to take her,
to carry her away, she didn’t
struggle. She stayed
quite still with her arms around you as
you travelled away into the night. But can
she trust herself? She is piecing herself
together from snatches
of films she’s seen. In dreams, she will dance
like Emmanuelle Béart in Manon des Sources
naked in the water, knowing herself &
nothing
is wrong. As Béart/Manon,
she will know what kind
of woman she wants to be: a woman about
to combust. Or she will conjure Amelie,
herself as Audrey Tatou when Amelie/Audrey’s body folds
to water, splashes
in a puddle on the floor. Even
the most cynical
are touched by it—they just
won’t admit it. Above her
the moon pulls with heightened
sensitivity & longing. You begin
entering her dreams when
she is near water: swimming
or in the bath, wading in lakes
or rivers & she will have no peace
unless she undresses
before you, unless
you undress before her. Too restless
to sleep or eat, shivering
in your bed. Years ago,
she could bring herself right
to the point of orgasm just
by thinking or
imagining, or she would come
in her sleep, unusual
for women. Is it like that
for everyone? she asks you. So much
out of the brain? She looks
in the mirror at
her pretty body, the sweet,
little breasts. The last time
she heard that song, she
was naked
in your bed & when
it was over you sweetly
fucked her
—c'est vraiment dégueulasse—
& she loved you
in spite of what others
might say. Il me dit
des mots d'amour… des mots
de tous les jours. But it’s no good
saying it over and again, when
she finds herself running
a corridor in La Belle et La Bête,
her cloak fogging
movements, hands grasping,
mistrust flaming the candlewax
so it falls on you
painfully. She sees the mistake
far too late, but now
she is cast out
naked on the grass in the morning light.
Because This Love
In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth.
--- Hymn to Ishtar, 1600 BC
because this love is strong as a rope;
because words on a page are not kisses on the mouth;
because I am strong & I am not strong;
because there is a crack in the eggshell;
because something is tapping its way out;
because I climb to hang from you;
because my body ornaments yours;
because I dreamed in the little hollow;
because you stood over me;
because you unwrapped me;
because my skin was grey & silver under the moonlight;
because I talk too much;
because I say too much;
because there are times when you say too little;
because there is a space behind text where emotion should be;
because I cannot tell what feeling lies behind these letters;
because I pour myself out;
because nothing is left;
because it seems unlikely that I would be that lucky;
because I fly like a goose feather on the wind;
because I cross oceans carried like a seed pod;
because I am the wind itself that blows across the flat land;
because I am visiting you now while you sleep;
because I came out of the water naked to find you;
because I watched over your bedside;
because I left wet footprints on the floor;
because I am looking for you behind my black lace;
because I have given you my body to look at;
because the body is bathed in salt & white fire;
because I am not here, but away in the greenwood;
because you were delivered to me on a hot day in July;
because it was a circling swallow that told me;
because the Lady Ishtar wishes it;
because Our Lady of Paradoxes forces me to bend;
because I am bleeding for you each day;
because you are close, perhaps in the next room;
because I carry your voice inside like my own voice;
because I am as tender for you as I would be for my own child;
because I dress in blue & look down at the ground;
because I am innocent, but I am not a virgin;
because they tell me that whores are holy;
because I can help what I am no more than a willow can;
because I spend too long predicting what you must think;
because I have laid my armor down;
because I put my armor back on;
because the armor is off again, silver in the grass;
because I took off my clothes in the light of the camera;
because I stood in the window of the studio naked;
because I looked out through the glass with no fear;
because, in mirrors, I could be a cloud or a succulent;
because sometimes in mirrors, I see a woman;
because I laid the length of my body along the studio floor;
because I wore only tulip petals veined with yellow;
because I am soft & smooth & blank as the page;
because I am stripping myself of my skin;
because I am the one who will write myself;
because we could not give each other what we promised.
This love will be the death of me, but now I know
that it will be a good death: one without too much
pain, the pinch when it enters. I still hope for resurrection.
The Men We Are Meant To Love
we were told about them as girls those men
who would fuck you gently or hard depending
on what you wanted men who never shamed
you for the choices you made when you didn’t
know those men going down on you in
the shower one hand on each of your thighs
and a tongue in your vulva men washing
your hair gently with long firm fingers the men
who would spoon you on nights when you slept
with your fear or men who wanted to kiss you
for hours or spend a day on each part of you oh
those men who would cook delicious food that
you would eat in bed before fucking again the men
who sit and listen and say something in return
that cracks open the egg of your knowing
that coaxes out something that you didn’t
see a shiny voice that makes you shudder
with the great surprise of it what we wouldn’t do
for those men what lengths we would go to what sweet
intimacies we would spread before them what delicious
ways to please we would find for those good men
who feel it too who open up who read books and
share who never spread their legs on the train or
mansplain at meetings men who maybe groan
at housework but do not expect a fanfare when
stacking the dishes or plates do not grow bitter
because they must do what their fathers never
did those men who do not laugh with the boys at
the stolen photo of a naked lover that a friend
flashes on his phone do not shove a woman into
the spare room at the college party do not touch
the behind of their co-worker do not force
their lover to have an abortion do not prevent
their lover from having an abortion do not assume
do not seize do not feel entitled do not do not do not
and you my lover staring into the red distance
are you one of those men
or not?
Zoë Brigley Thompson (b. 1981) is a poet and critic. She grew up in Caerphilly and studied Creative Writing, Gender Studies and Welsh women’s poetry at Warwick University. She is Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University, and she has three Poetry Book Society recommended collections: The Secret (2007), Conquest (2012), and Hand and Skull (2019) (all published by Bloodaxe). She also published the nonfiction essays Notes from a Swing State (2019) and a chapbook, Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep 2020).
She is committee member and contributing editor for Poetry Wales, and, with Kristian Evans, she is co-editing the Seren anthology , 100 Poems to Save the Earth (2021). In 2021, she will publish another poetry chapbook, Into Eros, with Verve Press.
Copyright © 2021 by Zoë Brigley Thompson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
