The Paris Commune by Joe Hess

A Street in Paris in May 1871, by Maximilien Luce, 1903-1906.

The Paris Commune
(Inspired by Maximillien Luce’s A Street in Paris)
 
 I. A Paris Street (27 May 1871)
 
On another day of smoke-sick pigeons,
she knew roads were lines of power
 
made into roads. She knew roads must,
at times, be blockaded, while one
 
stands perpendicular to flying bullets.
Then abruptly, a force knocks
 
the glasses from her eyes. A sudden,
sharp pain steals the day’s adrenaline.
 
Everything becomes a mistake, everyone
becomes a stranger rather than 
 
enemy or friend. She forgets the mission
that charged her fate, until the smell
 
of urine brings back the street she lies in.
A dog keeps silent in the alley
 
as she closes her eyes and her limbs
fail at feeling.
 
II. The Cemetery of Père-Lachaise (28 May 1871 to present)
 
Algae and bones remain while
the years grow vines within the gates
 
outside the city where she last
remembers another’s eyes above her.
 
Her hometown stops by her gravestone.
They remember her as a child,
 
before she went away. They raised her
while her mother worked the Paris
 
nightclubs that remain nearby. The smell
of summer quickly turns to winter.
 
Again, she misses the feeling of living
through the cold. It takes a half
 
a centery of paratactic events before
Einstein frets about spooky action at a
 
distance, reacting to small progress
made by the dim world seeing the whole
 
tapestry entangling ghosts and quantum
physics. She tries to forget about
 
separate concepts like forever and places
like the city of light or the times she
 
wore red lipstick. She’s reminded
the entropic blending of things is her
 
friend, but can’t forget about the one  
who brandished an eagle amulet before
 
saying to her, you know we fight not  for
power but for liberty, equality and fraternity--
 
almost and slowly, she thinks

Joe Hess

Joe Hess received his MA in Poetry from Miami University and his MFA from Ashland University. You can find his work in Marathon Literary Review; appearing soon in Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective, as well as the upcoming anthology by Shabda Press entitled Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands.