County Fair

On the mudroad of plodding American bodies,

my son wove like an antelope from stall

to stall and want to want. I no’ed it all: the wind-up

killer robot and winged alien; knives

hierarchical in a glass case; the blow-up vinyl wolf

bobbing from a pilgrim’s staff.

Lured as I was by the bar-b-que’s black smoke,

I got in line. A hog carcass,

blistered pink on a spit, made its agonized slow roll,

a metaphor, I thought, for anyone

ahead of me—the pasty-faced and broad. I half-longed

for the titanium blade I’d just seen

curved like a falcon’s claw. Some truth wanted cutting

in my neighbors’ impermanent flesh.

Or so my poisoned soul announced, as if scorn

for the body politic

weren’t some outward form of inner scorn,

as if I were fit judge.

Lucky my son found the bumper cars. Once I’d hoped

only to stand tall enough

to drive my own. Now when the master switch got thrown

and sparks skittered overhead

in a lightning web, I felt like Frankenstein or some

newly powered monster.

Plus the floor was glossy as ice. Even rammed head-on,

the rubber bumper bounced you off unhurt

and into other folks who didn’t mind the jolt, whose faces

all broke smiles, in fact,

till the perfect figure-eight I’d started out to execute

became itself an interruption. One face

after another wheeled shining at me from the dark,

each bearing the weight of a whole self.

What pure vessels we are, I thought, once our skulls

shut up their nasty talk.

We drove home past corn at full tassel, colossal silos,

a windmill sentinel. Summer was starting.

My son’s body slumped like a grain sack against mine.

My chest was all thunder.

On the purple sky in rear view, fireworks unpacked—silver

chrysanthemum, another in fuchsia,

then plum. Each staccato boom shook the night. My son

jerked in his sleep. I prayed hard to keep

the frail peace we hurtled through, to want no more

than what we had. The road

rushed under us. Our lush planet heaved toward day.

Inside my hand’s flesh,

anybody’s skeleton gripped the wheel.

Source: Viper Rum (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1998)