Topolalia
A land made out of spillings.
Here, and out of place
Where no body can stand.
Day by day
The impossible grasp
Of one’s own image
The face is a confusing
And painful zone, always
Waiting to be exhibited: showing
all these things from herself
that she would rather not see.
With makeup
Face daily life.
And discard
All the things that exceed her:
bits of skin
and of fingernails
itchy spots
and uneven surfaces.
The lack of surroundings
Gets thicker
And dismisses all possible
Cartography
Getting ready
is always
long
and
inadequate.
Using balms
creams
powders
and colored pastes,
Della tries to recreate
the effect of a skin.
Grounds are unsafe
As if mined
As if ready to explode
Topography is a nearly-white picture
Where to set foot
Promises danger
In the language if cosmetics
‘to be natural’ means ‘with no visible effects’.
Della says that she is always behind
Her body’s naturalness.
Creams and pastes dry
And become crusts on her face
Suffocating her.
Without skin (that skin which she puts on every morning)
she wouldn’t go out, of course.
But her incapacity of ever being natural
– this repeated proof of her inability to be
exposed –
prevents her from approaching others.
DON’T TRUST THE GROUND!
AND DON’T TRUST THE FEET!
It won’t be said that she is superficial, though.
Rather
That she is made out
Of mistakes –
making up for her broken body
for her broken language
using makeup on her face.
The anguish pours through
each of her pores –
Something we’d rather push aside
with a few words:
‘It is absolutely forbidden to look closely’
– Distance as the only possible relationship –
A body caught
Echoed
In the map
Of its temperatures
Invented
In feverish lands
Excesses in all directions
Make for the boiling point
Of self
Della speaks halfway
As though she weren’t entirely sure
That what she says really belongs to her.
It is as if she was speaking in lyrics,
Making up for the lack of words
by using overheard songs and melodies.
From this place:
Outrageous vocabularies
Where speech comes
From afar
Blood pours on her outside
As if blood could outline
her figure.
And pretend she is there.
There
skin is missing
Between threats from the inside
Between threats from the outside
Della’s body gets
Composed
in a fragile inter-
facing –
And her borderlined world
can have no name
Except for a mirror-name
That makes it an impossible place.
To the borderlands
Where the body has an accent
But where skin
Is lacking
A suspicious porosity
Tothe environment
A disturbed surrounding
Where everything
Splits
Where symptoms
Are the only things
Left
To map
The image
Of a body
Across
Reflections
Echoes’ effects
Are
Lost.
There
Words can be heard
As a karaoke –
By Cléa Chopard
Translated by the Author
Here is Cléa Chopard reading TOPOLALIA for the French Book Week:
Cléa Chopard is a poet, performer and translator based in Geneva, Switzerland. Her work is mostly concerned with questions relating to the body and its disorders. After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in visual arts from the Geneva High School of Art and Design in 2012, she completed a Master’s degree in contemporary art, specialising in literary writing and translation. Her artistic work has several facets: it takes the form of texts, books, micro-editions, performances, sound pieces and videos. Her texts often consider a spatial dimension: that of the page, the book, or the place where they will be read or performed. She finds her sources in literature, poetry, scientific or medical textbooks, botany, anthropology, sociology, the history of decoration, translation studies, feminist studies and so on. Through her works, she tries to redefine the image of bodies by using language as a disruptive factor and by integrating elements from various fields as ways to reinvent its representations. She is currently working on a PhD in creative research in Bern and Paris.
Photo of Cléa Chopard by Tristan Chopard