Sawdust rings

[ellajam]

I just love this. I've read and written plenty of circus poems but this one is a stand-out, so well crafted. Your timing along the way is captivating and sober truth is all over it.

L4: Do you need an apostrophe somewhere in tents? There are a couple of words that might be condensed or hyphenated: bill boards, high back. I'm not too sure about the double whispers but I wouldn't really want to see either of them go. Possibly a semicolon or some other punctuation at the end of L9.

Really fine work, inspiring.

I wanted the real photograph
not the straw bales
and candy apple faces.

The circus tents veil of glamour
soon returns to canvas and rope
as sticky children skip away,
trailing laughter.

I walk small among the closing down,
and creep my shadow on bill board walls
side tents glow behind busy glances.
The thin slit of a caravan door whispers
of a world not seen before.

She sits straight on a high back chair
smearing lines across her face,
high above the audience she climbs
each night with dusted hands
and plans a ballerina’s fake escape.
The old trailer offers up whiskey tainted
whispers as the low lights dim and surge. Great, hard working 2 lines.
She spoke plainly, knowing I had to listen.

Is this the picture you would take from me?
The empty glass reality of aching limbs
and crippled hands, a life that seeped
on traveled cracks between
your towns and fields
each poster pasted
over stolen miles and years.

My name is Alina, you should at least know that,

I didn’t answer, I stayed a coward, hidden
while my camera stole everything she had left.