It’s the fragrance of peanut shells that draws him in, the smell of horsewhipped joy in such a crowd. Maybe I can follow him as he disappears around the tent flap, maybe I can see his shadowless legs as he stands outside the center ring, considering the caged tigers, acrobatic clowns, death-defying women in spangled costumes who climb footholds to the high wire. Here’s what he did for me: he carried me to my bed when I begged him, lowered me gently to the pillow, or, later, threw me down like a bag of old clothes that needed to be washed clean. His love for me was olive-colored, dirt mixed with tears, so it’s a surprise to find him beneath the big top, his hand on a rope that coils to the highest platform, ready to head for the trapeze, to reel out into space, all those faces below turned up to him, the ripe fruit of the living.
Judy Kaber is currently the Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine, as well as the author of three chapbooks: Renaming the Seasons, In Sleep We Are All the Same, and A Pandemic Alphabet. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Atlanta Review, december, Crab Orchard Review, Hunger Mountain, and Spillway. She won the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, the Larry Kramer Memorial Chapbook Contest, and second place in the 2016 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.
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