Prompt: I just learned that the first week in August is International Clown Week. Upon learning that, I thought of a piece I wrote a few years back that appears in my first collection, Strange Fire. It is a memory of my family going to the circus in the 50s. After you read, you might want to write about a favorite memory at the circus or at the county fair. Perhaps you will want to write on your love (or distaste) for clowns or one particular clown, circus clown or otherwise. Note that I used a painting for inspiration. You might wish to do that, as well.
Under the Big Top
—after Marc Chagall’s Circus 1964
In the bed of the ’46 pickup
the family huddles like penguins
for the short distance
to the Greatest Show on Earth.
My face shows Entertainment a stranger in our world.
Already I smell the popcorn, the sawdust.
I feel the rush, imagining
lights and music and flawless feats.
We enter the colorful menagerie.
The big top revealing
first the freak
and then the fat lady
and clowns cutting capers, shooting confetti,
and exotic blankets adorning elephants whose headdresses
and sequined girls dazzle the crowd gone wild.
And the gymnasts with poles sdisplaying
versatility and balance.
We inhale and hold.
Confined to cages just moments ago, lions
now jump through fiery rings.
A trainer in ruffled shirt and white, stained gloves
lifts his baton.
On the drop, horses thunder past, and stunt men, practiced and
controlled, somersult
higher, higher,
on each other’s shoulders.
Hang tight!
Trapeze artists
soar
spin
dive
defying the odds.
No safety net.
And unicyclists
perched three high
hands outstretched
circle—
one, two, three.
The greatest show on Earth,
well-defined and executed
tastes of death.
There’s something—
something primitive about it.
I mean, the ring and all.
Published first in The Ekphrastic Review, Canada.