Kristen Tracy: THREE POEMS
CIRCUS YOUTH
for Sharon Olds
My life was going by. Year. Cake. Year. Cake.
And no circus. No clowns. Only that rotten dress,
blue and tumbling. I wanted to eat the buttons.
I wanted to feed the rest — cuffs and collar — to
the dogs. Let it be dung. Let it be that common.
It was awful. I was never brave enough to dismantle it.
Trapped in my cave of yarn, the dress chased me,
then taunted me as it sailed happily around the world.
I craved a ship. I desired a texture wholly unlike
my life. Clowns. Funny rubber balls.
Who handed me these knives to juggle? Who said
everything was going to be fine? I know. I know.
Childhood shows no mercy. Others have had to catch
much trickier knives — all blade, no handle. We all feel
doomed. Lost. And no one meets our demands for better maps
or parents or more robust Saint Bernards. The worst day
of my life. The circus. The tragic reality that IT
was a show. Lions reduced to cats. Midgets riding
motorcycles inside metal balls. The terror of the
ringmaster, so much like my grandfather, folding
in a bow. We took you, my parents said. And it wasn’t
a lie. Elephants in chains. Painted faces blistering under
the make-up’s grease. Afterward, I ached on my
sandbag pillow. Pots clattering to the kitchen floor.
A heap of a dead horse melting in the field beyond my window.
Couldn’t there be a different circus? Music piped
at the happiest pitch? Children so thrilled they shit themselves
in the stands and smile on? And clown hands,
clown necks, clown thighs put together to assemble
a truly hilarious thing? Futile, I know, I prayed
for years. Slowly flowering in my bed. Certain
of something. Wanting what I wanted.
Clown in my doorway. Clown on my floor.
A clown on my very own thumb.
GOODBYE, IDAHO
The dieseled fields. The lava hardened into unlovable
craters. The buds on my raspberries covered in frost.
Idaho. Idaho. Look at yourself. Dotted with zealots.
Spotted with cows. Imagine what you look like
from outer space. Luckily this won’t be like leaving
a man. No scene. Nobody will be calling
anybody a whore. Not now. After harvests so
bountiful they saved entire dispirited towns.
How else to say it? It’s time. Maybe it’s related to
the ants I saw laboring away atop a puff
of marshmallow. Their determination quickly giving way
to sorrow. Their small lives, one by one, crying out
to be crushed. When I stomped on them, I thought:
I am doing my job. I’m doing it well. Then I asked:
Is this who you want to be? No. I wanted out
of the equation. I wanted away from those ants
and my own murderous foot. Okay. That wasn’t
the truth. I was traveling through Mexico
when I saw those ants. And they triggered in me
contemplations of poverty and sadness and all the
short-lived sweetnesses I have known. Everything I do
isn’t about me. It’s as if you can’t see that. It’s as if
you can’t see a lot of things. Maybe this will be
like leaving a man. Plopped down like a couch. And I’ve
had to live on you. Covered in crumbs. Look at
yourself. Plaid-covered and mustard stained. How could
anyone take more? Do not say that I’ve failed.
There is a polished gun in every room. I dream
of metal. I dream of the arrow piercing
the songbird’s heart. No. I’m not saying
that I’m the songbird. I’m saying that I can’t sleep.
Not on top of you. I didn’t want this to be
funny. I’m tired of making everyone laugh.
Idaho, look at me. I’m being serious. Your trick roads,
I’m done with them. The face they gave me.
What they’ve claimed as theirs. It’s no longer
beautiful, the sharp ways they fall. I am wood.
When I see them, nothing inside me curls. You think
you can haunt me? You think I feel the same
way about you? No. Everything has changed.
It had to. So, deer, shed your fur. Mate
recklessly behind the snapping trees. Throw
your brown bodies onto the road. I said I
was leaving. I said goodbye. I’m almost gone.
Watch me. Can’t you see what you’ve done
to me? Now. My hand is on the door.
LOCAL HAZARDS
Outside Yellowstone, I see them — these bears — lumbering
like fathers through backyards, ravenous
for whatever we seal inside our trash. DO NOT
FEED THE BEARS: the signs say. Even this big,
they are animals, my mother warns, holding her hands out
creating the distance the size of a loaf of bread. Beneath
that fluff they are killing machines, adds my father,
raising his arms, curving his fingers to produce
mock paws. Season after season, they carry on –
these bears. Moist snouts. Sharp claws. Hind flanks
glistening under moon and sun. I am too young
to deal with them. Led by hunger to my doorstep,
to my dreams, they wildly arrive almost every day.
And I close my eyes, starving in my own ways. Bread crumbs
in my pockets. Trout in the refrigerator. The deep smell
of myself on my fingertips. Unwitting hazards,
do not come close. I can’t give you what you want.
Despite your puffed cheeks, playful gallop,
the loveable way you corral your young, I must keep
my distance. No, I will not will not devastate our lives.
Kristen Tracy
Copyright © 2008
