And I cry
unhinged
what is this
more hope

dead in my heart
is hidden a mouse

the mouse is dying
she is still

and in my hand the world is dead
blew out the old candle
before laying me to sleep

the sickness the death of the world
I am the sickness
I am the death of the world

ink wash almanac
fuzzy poet immortality
poetry cemetery of obesity

farewell saucy stew
sweet deaths dressed in women’s nudes

farewell deceitful sleeps

Earth turn turn earth
lathe of fucking wood
sun red sun black
white roses pink roses

tomb roses
stagger roses
fucking tombs

27 POEMS ON DEATH is a selection of poems written by the philosopher Georges Bataille during the Nazi occupation of France, aka Vichy France, 1940-1944 – Bataille’s most poetically active years, when out of recurring attempts to approach ‘the impossible,’ aka the poetic, he shifted the majority of his creative output from criticism to the poetic form.

Rachelle Rahmé is an independent scholar and poet. She is the author of Count Thereof Upon the Other’s Limbs (72 Press, 2019), and the chapbooks Puce Commodity (earthbound editions, 2020) and Bataille’s Eggs (b l u s h, 2021). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail, the tiny, Fonograf, and The Recluse, among others. She is a St. Mark’s Poetry Project fellow, 2021-2022, and a Lebanese-American born in Jounieh, based in Brooklyn, NY.