Incredible Wonders

INCREDIBLE WONDERS For Diane Arbus Their squawking waved up again to me at the top of the wheel, and I looked down along the monstrous yellow lights to the painted banners of incredible wonders. I was awakened by the jerk of the mechanism descending, the equation between our eyes: at a tent flap, looking up, the Gorilla Lady, blanket thrown over her soft and rounded shoulders. The Ferris wheel emptied my father and me at the red-striped door of the canvas freak show: long sawdust aisles sopping sweat like food, plywood platforms for Dog-Faced Boys and Sumatran Sword-Swallowers, men born without arms or legs, posing as seals. The barking man out front described the sadness of birth, the wonders of God. Inside howled the hungry laughs of children as their mothers smiled and reached for compacts, lipstick tubes. I remember no more than the dirt on old men’s shoes; the ice cream dripping spatters of fat; the tired freaks above us thinking of the canvas of our skins flapping back, the animal stares from our mirrors.

Joseph Allgren ©2009