O sing a song of midway lights—

by Jessie Lynn McMains

(Excerpt from The Loneliest Show On Earth)

O sing a song of midway lights—
tiny moons hung in the big eyes of little
girls.


You clutch your daughter’s arm a little too tight. Ow, she says, when your fingernails leave tiny half moons on her skin. She giggles at the clown twisting rainbow balloons into the shape of wiener dogs, giraffes, snakes. She’s drunk on cotton candy, grinning at her warped reflection in the funhouse mirror. Where next, Papa? She tugs at your sleeve & a dove flies out, startled. What trickster thaumaturge, what startling trick of circus light? Where next, papa.

O sing a song of the topsy-turvy world.


For you the shrieks of the midway riders & the gasps of three ring spectators sound sinister, & the cirkies are all hucksters hissing the townies down: Hurry hurry hurry, step right up! You won’t believe your eyes! Test your strength! See the freaks! Ride the rides! Win a prize! The calliope is candied doom, oooooo, it howls beneath the midway moon. Where next. Your little girl wants it all. She wants you to win her the biggest pinkest plushest toy at the ring toss. She wants to ride the fastest blackest carousel steed, wants the Ferris wheel gondolas lifting her into the summernight sky. She wants the Big Top with its tumbling clowns & trapeze swingers, its pretty ladies riding horses bareback, & the lions & tigers & dancing bears.


O sing a song of later tonight,
you’ll hold your darling girl close
as she falls asleep.


You’ll fall asleep in her bed & through the fog of dreams you’ll hear the circus train departing, heading for the next town. You’ll hear that whistle, moaning low; you’ll hear the wheels screech, you’ll hear your little one whisper where next. & you’ll jolt awake, heart fluttering like a startled dove. For a moment you’ll swear you left your girl at the circus & the thing next to you is just a girl-shaped poppet. But see: her small puffs of breath. How she twitches in her sleep. Safe as houses.


O sing a song of funnel cakes,
elephants, & tumbling mats. The
calliope a piper leading pie-eyed
children to the slaughter. The
circus comes but once a year
to snatch the wayward
daughters.