(untitled fish) | Hoda Adra
December 29, 2022
Élise Lafontaine, Vault, oil on linen, 2022; Yellow sound_dyptic, oil on padded canvas, 2022 | image: Sabina Bosch
(untitled fish)
to build her a cathedral like a deep sea diver
i erect ribs
create breath
where bats may nest
a giant octopus holds the space
tentacles scaffold the void
enigma arches
from mineral cloth
coral pipes pulsate
pendulum swings
pelvis whistles:
this is the circle/the circle is this
sound
liquefies
all
a woman charts a circle with her leg precisely before conceiving
says i am ready
make me compass
make me blueprint for when i die
pink folds restore horizon sun cracks a piercing tongue
stars birthed in daytime
sign up to shine under the sea, enlist in the abyss
i land in her damp vessel, stretcher of starfish ligaments
she rocks me and photons from the sea
planktons float in her stained glass
.⋅・˙•∙˙⋅.•˙・⋅．. ．・
she is
a well in the ocean basin
a nave for dreams
mother-faith-sediment
her keystone
a sponge lodged in her plexus
for the emptying of the filling mystery
if i could kneel under water
what i would pray for:
make me alluvium
stitch my titles after your tendons
Rock, Fossil, Broth-of-the-Earth.
Colossal fish spine.
arc-boutant le souffle/un poisson-volant inspire la
voûte/expire l'ossature/abdique les ailerons je
cherche un témoin/est-ce le soleil que je vois
j’appelle tes paumes en contrefort
mini-flamingoes rise
over and over and
so so many
sunsets on the
same goddamn wick
and so so much wishing
in the melting logistics
of a candle light
prayer, a sunscreen
pregnant seahorse paradox
this planet a shell for mud mirrors
soil for the motherless
desolate proof
this lie of
enough
is our grievance
take it to the solar flare paradise
a new circle twins the sun
dances in
the woman-vault
sous l’eau
respirer
ton soleil
Hoda Adra is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her work spans poetry, voice, drawing and theatre, exploring gender apartheid and aborted oral histories, with a renewed inquiry around the politics of marginalization of female bodies undergoing a forced suppression of movement. Her 2017 spoken word album "La liberté des sens" traces her journey between Lebanon, Montréal, and Saudi Arabia where she was raised. In 2021, her translations of Palestinian oral history video archives, collected in Voices of the Nakba (Pluto Press, 2021), were granted the PEN Translates Award.
