April 07, 2022
A Season in Hell with Rimbaud
by Dustin Pearson
Winner of Pushcart Prize 2021
from Fjords Volume 4, Issue 4
I dreamt I was showing my brother around in Hell.
We started inside the house.
Everything was brown besides the white sheets
in the bedrooms. I let him look
outside the windows, told him it was hottest there,
where the flames rolled against the glass,
as if a giant mouth were blowing them,
as if there were thousands caught in the storm,
pushing it onward with mindless running,
save a desperation for something else.
How had there been a house in Hell
and we invited with time to spend? Why was it
I hadn’t questioned how I got there? My brother
growing so tired from the heat, the sweating?
Surely we could open the door, he said. Surely there’ll be
a breeze. Even seeing already, even burning himself
on the doorknob. His eyes turned back in his head
working his way to the bedrooms, staining
the sheets with his blistered hands, and though I knew the beds
weren’t for the rest of any body, I sat by and let him sleep.