Carnival, September 17

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Carnival, September 17

The tweed-suit men with cul-de-sacs of hair 
stand glasses-down in mobile dating apps 
while up above their children sway and swear
they’re not locked in. Pink iridescent sap 
from cotton candy trees goes sludging down 
a pair of sticky cheeks, and somewhere in 
the night the smoky call of the peep-show man
summons a Gentile crowd to slip within 
his temple’s inner curtain. Blue-green light 
and thirty-second loops of carousel bells 
are weaved into a luminescent blanket 
that warms the autumn night, and all is well
until the chemo-balding lady with the red
bandana smashes in the glass-front box 
that holds the smirking Zoltar, and bloody-fisted 
grabs and twists his wired neck until the cops
are called. 

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