I Repeat

I admit to not being prepared 
for how casually the French dealt with death,
the intricate decor of the Catacombs, 
its school-child arrangement of bones
into valentine hearts amid what was both
the darkness of statistician order
and the careless geometry of a wood pile.
I wasn't ready for the way they welcomed me
to the Place de la Concorde, so cheerfully
recounting the history of social slaughter, 
where people’s heads were split from their necks
in such rowdy and governmental a fashion.
Isn’t the fountain nice? We put it there
over the spot of the guillotines.
I could not look at the cake-frosting baroque 
loveliness of each arrondisement without thinking: Blood. 
So much blood and so quickly. Heated bodies 
crowded together even closer in life
than in the common graves
they had to empty and refill like water glasses.
They were so hungry until they weren’t. 
And the sewer stench? But look at the epitome!
L’Arc de Triomphe! La Tour Eiffel! Look at the Louvre,
the one now, not the one we burned
or the one we burned before that.
After all, it was Moliere who wrote:
the secret is merely knowing
how to make the best of it.

SIAN M. JONES

Sian M. Jones received an MFA in fiction from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Passionfruit Review and Stirring: A Literary Collection, among other publications. In her day job, she writes as clearly as she can about complex code. She occasionally updates jonessian.com.