Alexis Bernaut [France]

 

Signature
 
My signature
as often signatures

used to be
my name

There is nothing left of it now but an A
a scribble

And a line underneath – all
that’s left of my surname

A mountain, a ridge line
towering above a cloud

And from this horizon, at age 40
I look at the little boy

Who once learnt to
write his own name –

 
The Limping Shadow
 
Suppose
 
I scatter crushed glass
under my feet just to find out
whether or not my shadow
would be wounded too
 
Would my shadow
severed from my flesh
carry on
without me?
 
Or would it take on the wound
as the price to pay
for being my shadow?
 
 
Amnesia
 
They cut your
legs and arms
and you don't bleed
They throw you
in the water
to teach you
to swim
and you don't swim
of course
you drown
so they empty
the pool
and when there is almost
no water left
finally you
bleed
 
 
I stole the backwash
 
I left the seas and oceans everything
salt, froth, and water
I stole the backwash from them
and sewed it to my pulse
and sewed it to my breath
 
I stole the backwash
from the seas and oceans
out of sight out of mind
and time stopped
and the moon was on the threshold
like a mother
watching her children leave
 
I stole the backwash
to turn it into the allegory
of repeated failure
and fall
and the backwash spoke to me
and said
turn your so-called failures into
a poem
if that can help you
to accept and love them
write this poem and name it after me
and now would you please
return me
to the vastness of the seas

 
Author’s Bionote :
 
*Alexis Bernaut (Paris, 1977) is a French poet, translator, and musician. He also runs the short story collection “Miniatures” at Magellan & Cie publishers. His poetry has been published in France and abroad, in reviews and anthologies, and he is the author of collections “Au matin suspend” (2012), “Un miroir au coeur du brasier” (2020), “Passage au marbre” (2024, International Francophone Poetry Award Yvan Goll 2025) and “Impasse” (2025). He translated US poets Jack Hirschman, Sam Hamill, Ian Boyden, and Margo Berdeshevsky, Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst (French PEN Club Award for Translated Poetry in 2023), and Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace.

(Photo by Margo Berdeshevsky)