A POEM BY WENDY SALINGER

COASTAL CAROLINA FAIR 
                        WITH GAY BOYS


Those who never forget how to play:

which are they?

Oh

they know

how

to look lovely.

Prescient as women, they see

the image in another's eye.


Who keep alive

in waists and lowered looks

for me the older motion of a boy

who too disdained me in his most pure moment.

The shadow of his nose lay on his cheek

cast iron in the moon. 

In his unsettled voice the wind

took place.


Who mount the constellations of machines--

                                          the electric swing,

its cupola whipped and scrolled like bridal cake--

out and out and over the tents

of Jolly Dolly and Electric Man

and Girl Alive who Has No Bones

until World's Smallest Family dwarfs to ants,

far over the Four-Winged-Duck, monstrous in flight;


each strapped in his bucket tight about the groin

and by a silver chain hanging on.


                                  ---Wendy Salinger
                                       from her book of poems
                                      Folly River, 1980

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