Why they shut my circus down
They said I was too touchy feely with the cheetahs
They didn’t know I used to be one
Fast, skinny, hungry for grass
For chalk and four-square
For my brothers before they started drinking
For my mother, before she stopped
Before the missionaries dunked her
Made her wear a jumpsuit
All of a sudden we felt bad for wanting coffee
They shut my circus down, it’s November’s fault.
The month her eyes crusted up so thick
Was bad news for the balloon people
She couldn’t eat, nerve wracked she felt milked,
Hungover, invaded.
She got lost in memories of sixth grade kickball
Of just wanting to be picked first
To make the team
To fill out her halter-tops, go on all the dates.
But days can taste like glass if you yell through them hard enough,
And she learned quick that she was good at yelling.
She was taught that brittle bones make for a good story,
And that bleeding fast like pennies is a source for strength.
So she shouted in apartment bathrooms
Got tangled up with one too many brown haired boys
who broke her body one lash at a time.
Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Gather Round!
Come see the famous fondler of the the spotted cats!
Come see the most bendy backed asians yet!
Come see The Helium Family Singers, they'll make you a balloon animal while high pitch belting!
And through this curtain we have the woman pregnant with claws
Tears caking up her face with lips, thin, like dead leaves!
It wasn’t a lucrative sideshow.
Made the collage boys hurl rape confessions up in the trash
And mothers like mine were shocked and appalled.
She went alone on complaints that our decline was indeed her fault.
She was wearing stick on earrings
Shivering under the stethoscope,
Her eyes black with questions driving themselves into trees
It was then she thought to herself,
How cold do I have to be to disappear?
When the clot fell from inside her shallow
The big top collapsed
Into the ground, a miscarried child.
The contortionists took it the worst
And started eating again.
The balloons ran, like they always do
into the atmosphere bursting like the squeels of
sixth grade girls running from base to base
in search of a safe home.
The balloons ran, like they always do
into the atmosphere bursting like the squeels of
sixth grade girls running from base to base
in search of a safe home.
November was left clinking her fork to chicken bones
Staring blankly and full
Of harvest, gratitude, emptiness.
Sick from all her good luck.
The cats and I made it out, we fled
Jumped a train and headed lost.
Past all the men with flannel houses
Past all the door knockers, and turtlenecks.
Stopping only for the kids skateboarding on their stomachs,
Fast skinny cheetahs.
We waited at the bottom for them to race down the hills that only seemed
big to them then.
Stopping only for the kids skateboarding on their stomachs,
Fast skinny cheetahs.
We waited at the bottom for them to race down the hills that only seemed
big to them then.
.
