The carousel glitters. The paint shines.
All the horses are beautiful and empty.

Another month with waning moon
at the edge of that circle,

I look for a ghost
I haven’t yet made,

any small movement
spot-lit in the sickled glow

shorting out, those bulbs which haven’t
shattered, crushed under

boot tip, errant sneaker, children
you couldn’t tell to stop running,

not because they wouldn’t listen,
and they wouldn’t, but because you’d

join them if you could, struck caution,
hair ribboning behind you even longer still,

eyes caught on something far off, never
wondering if you were destined

to be empty. Isn’t that what this dream means?
The carnival, deserted.

The music twists to sharp and strange,
the tilt-o-whirl flipped all the way over, now,

the ghost of a kiddie train curled on its side.
Here’s where I tell you

how tall you must be, how perfectly-shaped
to slip into a crevice. I’ve known people

who won those claw-machine games
every time. I’ve lost just about

every quarter I ever had, chasing after it,
and never got what I wanted.

I didn’t enter the tunnel of love
even in daylight, I shied up

too scared of the turns of that river.
Unsteady boat, metal track or no,

never sure I’d come back the same woman
I’d started in as, myself as my own companion

already changed. Where is this going? Every ride
a loop, every line circles back toward the end

and the next passenger’s turn.
Why a carnival, he asks.

For a little while, I say,
you choose your own joy,

suspended in reverie,
you’ve got your days mapped out

skittering along either side of it, but for those few hours
wrapped around the coaster’s base,

waiting for the funnel cake to stop sizzling
long enough to burn you less,

there’s no exact schedule,
you’re at the whim of evening, yourself,

whoever’s got the lever and
can start it all up, again.

You punch your ticket, and you’re in.
You are given a map. Tokens.

It all lines up as it should—
in this, let the colored lights rain down

their blessing. And then, another desperate turn.
Tomorrow asks what you owe.

Get to the point—you’re barely even here
for the ride. Whack-a-mole and shooting targets,

all those skills you never mastered,
prizes just out of reach, there was never

a sweet spot you could point to
and actually hit, but

the wheel keeps its promises:
zenith and cellar, ground and sky.

The gears and the arc, at least,
a thing you can mostly predict,

the rabbit suspended in flight
still running across that field

a tin shadow flipped back and forth,
by prowess, luck, clever invention,

isn’t that the demonstration—
repeat, repeat—

there is only this
future and this past and this

same
brightly-painted thing—

Kenzie Allen

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