A Poem By Monica Ferrell

A Funfair in Hell

after Van Gogh’s “Le café de nuit”

While the proprietor looms at the center of the bar
in white linen suit, as though on safari,
I trace the grooves worn in this old wood,
I taste my beer and it is cold as some god.

The lights in hell must be something like these,
immortal as remorse, as words once they are spoken,
and the people in hell must be like these men
holding engines of heads spinning emptily in their hands.

The proprietor wears a flickering smile
pretty as the word syphilis.
He shines one beer tap, then another.
The silence in my mouth is a piece of felt.

I am ready for my annunciation, Angels.
I am ready for the enormity.
Bring out the unguents, the strigil and gauze.
Weigh my heart against a feather.

Monica Ferrell’s second collection, Oh You Absolute Darling, is forthcoming from Four Way in 2018. She is the author of the novel The Answer Is Always Yes and of Beasts for the Chase, a finalist for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Prize in Poetry.

The Poetry Section is edited by Mark Bibbins.