Translations from the Flesh

Fantasia on a Phrase from Don DeLillo

63 fantasia on a Phrase from Don Delillo Women in warm climates smell of clove and white camellias, their skin smooth as if born from the lost wax process. Susceptible to weather, women in warm climates drowse under the drugged light of sun, and at the chill’s least ripple press themselves against the windfall flame in the firecrib. Women in warm climates need no preface to pleasure, no blouse transparent on the banked breasts. Ambassadors from the moon, the oils panting through them in a quick rinse, they feel the same pull and slur as the sea. Women in warm climates pause at the brink of stairways, unwrinkling the haze of lace, their brows mapless in the tight light. Unknown to science or the testaments, women in warm climates vibrate inside themselves an extra membrane, like a pulse of wet plums. Women in warm climates keep a secret beat for the strut of a brother, that cool stroke, that little hitch and a glide. Not silver, that desperate metal, nor gold gussied up for kings and whores— 64 women in warm climates wear no slink of slave chain at the wrist, nothing on their necks but the oval yoke of their own bone. Women in warm climates leave a kiss like a snail’s trace, slow and slick. Only women in warm climates would walk barefoot over the bridged backs of alligators, whose jaws jilt open like badly fastened handbags. Women in warm climates can scut an oyster from its briny box, and with a sharp spoon unsex the whiskered artichoke. The black knot and scroll of balconies must have been built for women in warm climates— and verandahs where the winds splash all afternoon, and fans that dangle their headfirst petals on a stiff stem. In the fat lap of summer, they practice the principles of inertia, largo of moss and womb and dream. And would your touch stir the heavy syrup through their hearts to sweeten them, or your name become the smoke and smoulder in their blood? Women in warm climates slake their lips at the madder of a moist mouth, unloosing from the deep end of desire smiles that ripen in the night. ...