This is the fourth in a new series of poems commissioned for Art and Everything After. Poets chose from a selection of new drawings called companions.Ms. Andersen selected the image above. A full size image can be seen here.
HELL
The little screens glow inside the rural house. I know the place in inches: My head’s a dead knock, my feet are filled with water, my daughter has been waking me for weeks. It seems that all the gods
are fast asleep. She’s heard that the world will soon be underwater, so I tell her how to shoot and how to swim. She grins. Swedish experts describe hell as permanent separation from God—
as a concept, it seemed acceptable. But now the nights are past collapse. The house is full of electric blood. The milk cools, untouched. Another child has woken up. I’m surrounded by wireless fire. The loneliness is hell.
Kirsten Andersen is the author of Family Court, a chapbook collection of poems forthcoming from Q Avenue Press. Named the 2014 Anthony Hecht Scholar at the Sewanee Writer's Conference, Kirsten has received fellowships from Stanford University and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is a National Poetry Series finalist whose work appears most recently in Canteen Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Tin House, and The Believer. She received her MFA from New York University.