Carnival
BY BRIAN TIERNEY
They raze swiftly each interstate mystery.
The haunted house.
The Astrolabe. The silent calliope, emptied of air, ornate
as a head-of-state’s coffin
on wheels, its gold-
painted spokes, its faux-ivory panels
as chipped and streaked
as my mother’s teeth were then—
which, even in memory, she can’t afford
to fix. This is in lieu of
what I really want to say.
In an hour, the children we were here
will sleep, forgetting
their bodies forgetting
umbilical airgun stalls, the feel of
the handles and the reigns
of the horses speared through on poles, for travel
unmounted lying side by side
like a civil-war still life together in the fennel
as tall as a person, taller even
than parents among the patrons, with their paper cones
of sugar as they leave, sweeter
than soda, sweeter even
than Matthew, the pear taste on his lips
I savor any time I eat
a Waldorf salad, suddenly younger and
with him again, re-watching
the caravan prep its procession
to some next destination: de-christened hearses
and escort vans, econo-trailers
and towing booths
and tosser-stands, from which
any one of us could buy
brass rings to throw through
a cardboard circle of a Bengal’s mouth, and beyond
its black drape, its rough crepe
synth-linen mix, with its fabric stars
affixed comically
to the drape—behind which, if you dared
peel it for a peek between shifts,
while the vendor on-break
would be rolling a joint with his boo-boo
stash, behind all that you’d see
each dollar-twenty fate, each zil
where it fell unseen
behind the drape, into a daisy-print bucket
filled with them they’d leave
til near end, the carnies, or whatever we call them
now, needing two of them
to lift it, and sometimes more.
