Joyce Mansour

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Joyce Mansour (1928 -1986) was born Joyce Patricia Adès, in Bowden, England to Jewish-Egyptian parents. She lived in Cairo where she first came in contact with Parisian surrealism and then moved to Paris in 1953 where she became the best known Surrealist woman poet, author of 16 books of poetry, as well as a number of important prose and theater pieces.

Here are two of her poems:

I saw my belly's electric red hair Rise toward my breasts, feathered bird, And I laughed. I saw humanity vomit in a shaky church basin And I did not listen to my heart. I saw a camel dressed and leaving for Mecca Without the thousand and one sand vendors and the scaly Of the black crowds. But I could not go with them Laziness had reduced the better part of my fervor And routine had retrieved the dislocated Dance of the big toe.

I want to sleep with you

I want to sleep with you side by side Our hair intertwined Our sexes joined With your mouth for a pillow. I want to sleep with you back to back With no breath to part us No words to distract us No eyes to lie to us With no clothes on. To sleep with you breast to breast Tense and sweating Shining with a thousand quivers Consumed by ecstatic mad inertia Stretched out on your shadow Hammered by your tongue To die in a rabbit’s rotting teeth Happy.

--Joyce Mansour, 1955

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