Epithalamion from the ferris wheel, with birds
Which
summer was it I lost my kid brother
at the
carnival? I spent my
quarters like clouds spend
rain. When
I could not find him, fire-slaught sluiced through me, his name
from my
throat like the sounds rising
off the tilt-a-whirl, lifted
higher
than the carriage of the ferris
wheel. I ran
the
fairway. Please, I panted, and this is the part
repeating
in me like a robin’s song. Lover, I’m still greedy, still
at the trickster’s
stand trying for that
enormous unicorn
stuffed
with nothing but rannygazoo. I’ll vow it: I know so little of how
love
works, how it starts, stays, soars over the cherry orchards
like a
flock of starlings, flits and ripples
and settles
in the
forlorn stalks of corn. My brother wandered
out
the 4-H
hall, loped toward me with a
fist of popcorn. What I mean is
I remember
this feeling: I
cracked
open for
you, my stolen egg in spring, and this,
our
aviary,
this wheel’s lurch, one more way of
reaching
for sky.
From where we are, its crags and
funnels, its whistle
and yawp,
its unfettered edge at the county line,
love
seems
bright with gimmickry. Who else could
bring the trill
of a
winter finch, some Pine Siskin’s wing holding forth, the shimmer
of
surprise—you here, me here, somehow having
found
each other in the raucous, peopled fairway of this life?
Susanna
Childress has published two collections of poetry and is now at work on a book
of creative nonfiction titled "Extremely Yours." Her work can be
found or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, Crazyhorse,
Iron Horse Literary Press, Rhino, Relief, and Oakland
Review. She grew up in southern Indiana.