I did not write this, but it has long been something that I thought worth reading…
Author: Nicole Brossard, (translated by Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood).
SOUS LA LANGUE (UNDER TONGUE)
The body salivates, yet nothing is foreseen, not the wealth of touching, nor the furtive slowness, the exact frenzy of mouths. Nothing is foreseen, yet at eye level is where the body first touches everything, without foreseeing the naked skin, and it needs saying, without foreseeing the softness of skin that will be naked even before the mouth signals the state of the world.
Nothing here to suggest that at the slightest touch the gaze already falters wanting already to foresee such a rapprochement. Nothing is foreseen other than the breathing, the sounds resounding flesh to flesh. Does she frictional she fluvial she essential does she, in the all-embracing touch that rounds the breasts, love the mouths’ soft roundness or the effect undressing her? Nothing is foreseen yet at body’s uttermost the skin will image the body for without image there is nothing at body’s uttermost images shatter the state of the world.
You cannot foresee so suddenly leaning towards a face and wanting to lick the soul’s whole body till the gaze sparks with furies and yieldings. You cannot foresee the body’s being swept into the infinity of curves, of pulsings, every time the body surges you cannot see the image, the hand touching the nape of the neck, the tongue parting the hairs, the knees trembling, the arms from such desire encircling the body like a universe. Desire is all you see. You cannot foresee the image, the bursts of laughter, the screams and the tears. The image is trembling, mute, polyphonic. Does she frictional she fluvial she essential does she all along her body love the bite, the sound waves, does she love the state of the world in the blaze of flesh to flesh as seconds flow by silken salty cyprin.
You cannot foresee if the words arousing her are vulgar, ancient or foreign or if it is the whole sentence that attracts her and quickens in her a desire like a scent of the embrace, a way of feeling her body as truly ready for everything. Nothing is foreseen yet the mouth of bodies commoving aroused by the words by instinct finds the image that arouses.
You cannot foresee if the state of the world will topple over with you in the flavour and surging motion tongues. Nothing is foreseen yet the shirt is half-open, the panties barely away from the cleft and yet the closed lids and yet the inner eyes are all astir from feeling the tender in the fingers. You cannot foresee if the fingers there will stay, motionless, perfect, for a long while yet, if the middle finger will move O ever so slightly on the little pearl, if the hand will open into a star shape at the very moment when the softness of her cheek, when her breath at the very moment when the other woman’s whole body will weigh so heavily that the book where it rests gives way under the hand, the hand, at the very moment when balance will become precarious and thighs will multiply like orchids, you cannot foresee if the fingers will penetrate, if they’ll forever absorb our fragrance in the image’s continuous movement.
Nothing is foreseen for we do not know what becomes of the image of the state of the world when the patience of mouths lays being bare. You cannot foresee from among the waves the one the unfurling one the split second that will image in the narrative of bodies whirling at the speed of the image.
You cannot foresee how the tongue wraps round the clitoris to lift the body and move it cell by cell into a realm unreal.
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 