Conjunction.

• Author: Belli, Gioconda
• Position: LATITUDES - Poem

Outside the crouching night waits like a tiger to do a somersault through the window within these walls where painfully I make the words emerge from the air, the latent presence of a kiss on my leg surprises me. There is no one. Only my body alone. My body and my hair extended in images. I am here and so are they the speechless women the ones my fingers illuminate the ones the night's moon-breath carries. Women of the centuries inhabit me: Isadora dancing with her tunic Virginia Woolf, a room of her own, Sappho throwing herself from the rock; Medea, Phaedra, Jane Eyre and my women-friends scaring time's aging writing themselves shaking off the shadows to pour light on their faces and being seen at last stripped of all convention. Women dance by the light of my lamp, climb onto the tables, give incendiary speeches besiege me with their suffering the bruises on their bodies the pain of childbirth the silence of the fragrant kitchens the ephemeral tense bedrooms. Great women monumental women encircle me they recite their poems sing dance win back their voices; they say: I couldn't study Latin: I couldn't...