Paris at Night by Debasis Mukhopadhyay

Three matches lit one by one in the night

The first to see your face in its entirety

The second to see your eyes

The last to see your mouth

 

At Bataclan around 9.45 p.m. they opened fire

They were surprised at how quick we dropped

They reloaded just three times

The music all around reminded them of our

Faces

Eyes

and

Mouths

As they took a few follow-up shots on our heads

And we were all quiet after that

But our corpses are still rolling

And kill them again if they ever stop rolling

 

 

*The fragment in italics used in the beginning of the poem is from Jacques Prévert’s Parole.

Debasis Mukhopadhyay is a poet from Montreal. His poems have appeared most recently in over a dozen literary magazines such as Yellow Chair Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, With Painted Words (U.K.), Of/With, I am not a silent poet, Silver Birch Press, Foliate Oak, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Snapping Twig, Eunoia Review, Down in the Dirt, Fragments of Chiaroscuro, Words Surfacing, etc. Follow him at  debasis mukhopadhyay or @dbasis_m on Twitter.