No, “fondle” does not mean “frôle.” And yet, “fondle” is the word “frôle” sends me. Perhaps it is the pipe of the f’s. Or the o’s scoping out over time in notes, blanches ou rondes. But I think it is more the difference of touch. The way, in my woman’s life, “fondle” came up in events otherwise called “accident” or “accidental”:

“You touched my breast!” “It was an accident!” “You practically fondled it!” “I just brushed up against you!”

The difference of a word’s touch. In scenarios organizing themselves for someone’s narrative salvation and another’s oblivion.

This poem is one in a collection I’m either terming The Entrancelations or Les Déformaductions, wherein I extract lines from the novels of Hélène Bessette and play with their sonic double edge as pressed against the text of me. Yes, it is personal. No, it is not an official translation.

Je trahis l’officiel.

Trêve de poësie.

It is also, perhaps, a reclaiming. Pour “L’héroïne. De mauvaise humeur.”

I have one just out in Pamenar Press Magazine. It arrives in a very westernized pantoum form (that lunges forward and pirouettes back) and allows me to card across the strophes different linguistic fibers. Fanny-Foo Foo is my creation. Perhaps to become recurring. Who, like many a Bessettian woman, changes form and denomination. But all the time. And most certainly her relationship to “l’accident.” And thusly “l’intentionnel.” Yes, thusly.

Thank you very much to Ghazal Mosadeq, for accepting it into the Internet pages of her wonderful cross-cultural and multilingual space.