La signora Rosetta

(excerpt)

Di Tiziana Sferruggia

L’ uomo con la sigaretta accesa fra le tumide labbra rosse

sormontate da baffoni a manubrio, scurissimo di pelle

con i neri capelli ricci domati da una brillantina oleosa

la guardava senza imbarazzo.

Sfrontato inanellava cerchi concentrici di fumo e li spingeva

verso l’ alto.

Grandi neri occhi di carbone sfavillavano e cercavano quelli

della donna rigida algida e bionda alla finestra di fronte.

Fece un cenno appena percettibile con la grossa testa e

allungò le spesse labbra simulando un bacio.

UNA DONNNA SONO

UNA DONNA SONO

UNA DONNA SONO.

Un’ eccitata vocina interiore mai sentita prima

le soffiò leggera parole attraenti che invitavano al peccato

e tentatrici e sconvolgenti le suggerivano, le aprivano,

le facevano scorgere sentieri nascosti, percorsi inesplorati,

emozioni mai provate, mai neppure immaginate.

Lo spavento della passione era un labirinto di bosso.

Lo sconosciuto nero come la pece, rustico e con una

sensualità sfrenata, diremmo quasi faunesca, mosse le

pacate acque di quello stagno disseccato che emanava

femminilità quanto un manico di scopa e fece il miracolo.

Rosetta la fredda avvampò dai lombi ai lobi delle orecchie.

La signora Rosetta

(excerpt)

By Tiziana Sferruggia

The man with the burning cigarette dangling from florid lips

crowned with a thick handlebar moustache, ebony skin

and black curly hair tamed by a shiny pomade,

looked at her without a trace of shame.

Brazen, he crafted concentric rings of smoke and blew them

upwards.

Big eyes, charcoal black, shone and tried to capture those

of the rigid frigid blond woman in the window opposite his.

He bowed his huge head imperceptibly and

pursing his thick lips shaped a kiss.

I AM WOMMAN

I AM WOMAN

I AM WOMAN.

An excited inner voice never before heard

whispered soft words that encouraged her to sin

tempting and disconcerting it suggested, it unlocked,

it uncovered trails hidden, routes uncharted,

emotions never before felt, nor even imagined.

The fear of passion was a labyrinth of boxwood.

The dark ebony foreigner, rustic and charged with

unbridled sensuality, almost faunish, we might say, agitated the

still waters of that desiccated pond, which emanated

as much femininity as a broomstick, and performed the miracle.

Icy Rosetta’s blood rushed from her loins to her ear lobes.

Translation by ©Matilda Colarossi

Tiziana Sferruggia was born in 1969 in Mazara del Vallo but lives in Marsala. She writes for the city paper. La signora Rosetta, from which the excerpt is taken, is her first novel and was awarded honourable mention in the XXVI edition of the Calvino prize with these words:

«for a grottesque slice of the unsuccessful life of an aspiring micro-bourgeois woman from the south” http://premiocalvino.it/

You can find Tiziana’s work here: http://letteraturaecinema.blogspot.it/2014/07/la-signora-rosetta-di-tiziana.html

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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