Traces (excerpt)

Samira Negrouche
Translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson

A finger realigns the threads  / / /  a finger cuts  / / /  a finger inverts  / / /  a finger presses / / /  a finger slips  / / / a finger goes and comes back  / / /  a finger inverts the threads  / / /  a finger flits  / / /  a finger gives you a drink / / /  a finger pulls fabric over the baby’s cheek  / / /  a finger smiles  / / / a finger tastes  / / /  a finger measures  / / / a finger dips into mercury  / / /  a finger spools threads / / / a finger follows you  / / /  a finger measures you and in measuring you, it measures the distance  / / /  a finger scrutinizes you  / / /  a finger asks you the question again / / /  a finger spins the threads  / / /  a finger shakes  / / /  a finger planes  / / /  a finger wipes the corner of the eye  / / / a finger extends the invitation  / / /  a finger passes through you.

 

 

My hands sway, they endlessly repeat the same gestures,
they’re inscribed in me.
Gesture is multifold.
Within gestures, there’s a pileup of gestures, which I
repeat. I don’t remember learning them, they entered
me, by magic or necessity.

 

There was no forced entry between us, no rape.

 

The gestures I repeat are like silence, they don’t bother
me, they have their own life, I have mine which observes
the swamp, the dawdling child in the swamp collecting
what he shouldn’t collect on this surface loaded with
what shouldn’t be there.
The wandering child collects.

 

 

Gesture is multifold
it’s silent inside me
and that’s how I see
That’s how I see you
multifold.
That’s how I touch you.

The motionless surface
vibrating, vibrating
making a sail within
breathes within.

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Headshot of Samira Negrouche

Critically acclaimed Samira Negrouche was born in Algeria, where she continues to live and work. Best known for her poetry, she’s the author of a multitude of titles, including prose and translations. Involved in various multidisciplinary projects, her collaborations include Quai 2I1 with violinist Marianne Piketty and theorbist Bruno Helstroffer. Her poems have been translated into over twenty languages, one of which was a finalist for the National Translation Award.

Headshot of Nancy Naomi Carlson

Nancy Naomi Carlson, the author of five titles and ten books of translations, won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. A recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation grants and France’s Order of Academic Palms, she is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall. Her translation of Djiboutian writer Abdourahman A. Waberi’s When We Only Have the Earth (University of Nebraska Press: African Poetry Book Series) arrives in March 2025.

Cover of Solio by Samira Negrouche

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Solio
Seagull Books

Kolkata, India

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“Solio—aptly named for a word whose root belongs to several world languages—means crossing, threshold, or coming to attention. This word, used in the last poem of the volume, showcases Negrouche’s repeated segue between presence and absence, observation and vision. It indicates her ability to shoulder the weight of the universe’s memory that lives in her ‘three mother tongues’. . . Her poetry reads like an unhurried act of poetic self-accomplishment.”
—World Literature Today

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