Poems by Bridget Brigitte

Luna, nuit

(appeared in Metropolitan, Vol 3, no. 3, 2-3)

In blue veils
she descends
glowing white,
pearls tumble straight,
float at angles.

Voices, over no audible word,
scratch finch-sharp,
gradually turn to absence
warm even's hour
in bundles, heaps.

Where whirs cease,
ears are left acute;
steps soften in leaping
dogwoods covered now,
but one.

Space is left in weed dirt
around it sprawl diamonds
spider-reaching, fronds sport snow
space because when the artist capitulated
none in the city watched for blooms.

Fur flurries.

The voice that spread
across a layer, a liquid
gave way
to a cushioned sphere,
listening is hardly interrupted.

Even powders sprinkled on planes
graduate to shadows, leave framed color;
warm parental chains about stiff plaster,
sturdy walls crumble, at the bed neighborhood
cover lets sleep flow.

Crystalline night announces
a rare aesthetic
even naked lamps are dressed
one day only
packed rigid faces drop like cliffs.

Some peel oysters
from opal shells
today light
caught in your skin,
dislodged, split one from the other.

Cormorant

(Appeared in The G.W. Review, vol XV, no. 1, 29)

It could be, the windows,
Kansas, flat Nebraska
away from the highways they blink,
in flashes
brighten the pall,
summer's burdensome heat
flipping leaves joust and jab one another,
with straight hair flattened to foreheads,
they bend forward to keep from falling.
Flashes slap to travertine dullness
opaque blends of maple, oak, ash and birch
angled lines of ink,
pens soften sky-framed silhouettes
mountain-range of treetops
all running, heralding water
the many the one dotting twenty
four panes, pointillism
of dashing cerulean rocks
whose collisions are the
sounds of closet doors
rolling uncomfortably in
their alleys, trees tamed
to houses.
Scratching cymbals disrupt the walls
diagonal leans to perpendicular
screens fill with steam until a whiteness lined
by even brighter, resigned foliage
blocks windows to the room
until finally, stiletto points thin to marble,
outside liquids form the after-crowd
a familiar star presides over
swollen tiles, uneasy balance of
dissipating drops, one scene,
with heat predominant, another.
(Like the sun in Holland
an amazing clarity of light
frees rainbow spots through
rooms, shows their insect
disappearance, settles on the
well-still pools of serenity
in the home, white sheets,
brass, competing blossoms,
rectangles of day that can only
be caught circling rooms at times.)

Blue Hands

(Appeared in The Wayne Literary Review, Fall 1993, 23)

Transparent wrists
those extended upwards

ranunculus red, tracing circles
beyond yawning clusters

leaves, whose summer sigh
blows onto frost

an assurance that water edges
will wrinkle, lap, and weary

at the request of winds.

Novel by Bridget Brigitte

Deathbeds:
Eiréa's Impressions of Techno Paris and Elsewhere

Description:

A study in art noir, Deathbeds: Eiréa's Impressions of Techno Paris and Elsewhere... is the story of an independent young American woman who selects Paris as the spot to reassemble a life of disarray, only to find that for every crack mended, new ones appear. Meditative paragraphs are separated by one-liners that tell the story of a Paris seen through the eyes of an alternately confused and amused narrator. Eiréa works in an art gallery, philosophizes, experiences the city at night, travels. She rooms with a French lieutenant, learning how to rely on herself as she accumulates friends and lovers, all the while challenging stereotypes and facing death in its various guises as it crosses her path. Traditional French sayings and variations on them dot the adventures of a traveler making sense of nonsense and nonsense of sense.

Excerpts:

If one avoids people, it is either that one does or does not want to see them.

On the Assemblé Nationale where shadows were cast, long monstrous suit-sporting executives with briefcases measuring twenty by thirty feet on the wall screen stepped singly, arching around small hoops of light that went from small to big again and again until at the end of the building there was silence, until newcomers passed. Despite keeping your arms crossed or hands pocketed, crowds could pull you anyway, unnegotiable waves, while Paris rocked, it hardly ever did. It got older too, and the poison he injected was to slowly make her old, by accident. Les Gauloises, all of a sudden a kind of youth had sprung, one that no one recognized, daughters and sons of houses, homes even, they tried hard to put on the facade of roughness, of raw English rock, or American. Eyes were bright, like those of young pets, inquiring and innocent in all the jeans and worn sneakers, layers of them. You saw your friend in the crowd, though he was not there, and he was better than everyone, all four hours of them, softer, finer, more perfect than all of them, it was enough to let you go home to no one, satisfied. He, not there, was enough.

..........

Certains ont les dents qui rayent le parquet.

What was clear was how one couldn't decide to take some without the other. One couldn't love French lovers and hate infidelity, one couldn't adore French children, their activity, agility, responsiveness and delicacy, and despise the institution of the Parent, the Sunday meal or Family gathering. One couldn't sleep together until five and expect the trains to be on time or linger until dawn with the lieutenant and expect the Maginot line not to collapse. The price of American efficiency was lack of character. One or the other. People called France the country of recovery, the gazes were soft and gentle. If it was the place to recover, it was also the place to die, one fell slowly into the petal arms of those who thought about others not because they tried but because they accidentally cared, because they had been cared for, a way of life. The real French people; there were also the profiteurs. Never took long to tell the difference, but then France had a way of rubbing off on its inhabitants, so some grew soft. A country of detail, the twirling balcony irons at night reminded that someone had twisted the metal to make it pretty; instead of stumbling black confused depressed and eager at all costs to hide again in sleep, the silhouette comforts were simple ornaments to the night, you got up, that's all, it was the middle of the night and time to sleep again, tomorrow there would be chocolate and people and socks but it was too late to think of that now so best to forget about the time, the filigree, and the fact you were blurred because it was time to sleep. In France, everything fits into a box.

..........

The last laugh was for those who still could.

She worked in a stand at a fair selling colorful frozen scoops. As she leaned to hand away the paper cones, those she worked with took money from her pockets. With every transaction it was the same. She dreamed of the gleaming cuts in the metal coins that hung as earrings on the last customer, of the blend of grey corduroy with the used leather of his shoes, of a transparent smile that would be different five years from now. She would fish for change and there would be little left because there was no room or time to think of the medium of exchange that disappeared as she worked; she lived as if sleeping while awake.

"If Easy Rider said something about the Sixties ('No holes barred'), Deathbeds says something about 2000: 'Set your own terms.' A mind-opening read!"

-- Peter Fonda

............

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