National Poetry Month : Jérôme Melançon,

 

Against Thresholds

For Étienne Tassin

I have kept myself from the image, your concrete
search in an ocean of breath, that wholesome presence,
those fluxes of flesh, distances crossed with others.
Words, you were ready to leave in our joined hands. I
know them exhaled through the lack of filters, borders
you taught us to loosen where bodies drift. Your hands
won’t mold our aging questions, were never meant to
be the bulwark, the fence, the post – couldn’t hold you
there, together, one; couldn’t reach beyond the blood
to the sidewalk and the legs that would carry and
hear your death with the world you convinced us to hold.

 

 

Jérôme Melançon writes poetry and philosophy, writes about each through the other, writes in French and in English, and translates one into the other. He is the author of two chapbooks with above/ground press (Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright, 2022; Coup, 2020). His poems can be found in the Poets against Fascism anthology and, soon in +doc #4; his reviews appear in periodicities and occasionally in The Temz Review. His most recent collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He can be found in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK, and on various social media platforms as lethejerome.