I
Forty years of Jumbo doing a one-handed handstand while some geek
simultaneously bites the head off a Wyandotte cock
and the band plays a Hungarian Dance by Brahms
doesn’t mean we’re all on the same page. No Human Skeleton or
- Bearded Lady will primp
less for a small show than a great. A unicorn may graze
the dunes in all their vagaries
and never quite grasp the point
its horn is secured by Bondo.
Though a Norwegian bareback artiste may extend her liking for mere glogg
to mulled wines in general, a curl of the upper lip is a sign of colic
fairly specific to horses. Our impulse to give anything a try
takes in both sudatory
and Psalter, don’t you know? I know from your well documented
- propensity to moan
that your page would be very far from mine
even in the first of those Syllabyi
Errorum Pope Pius IX, poor slob,
one-handedly set down in 1864, the very year Forepaugh first put a
- unicorn in clover
and Sherman’s march to the sea meant the Civil War was pretty much over.
II
Forty years since we set up winter quarters in Florida and the hay-bale
first tumbled into the economy of scale,
what with the cost
per unit going down as surely as an elephant will be gussied
up for the “come in.” Arachne swallowing a sword all the way to the hilt
as the crowd inches into the tent. The frost now having taken such a hold
the citrus crop is under threat. Each orange and lemon moving
- in its own sphere.
As for the ignominies suffered by Lucifer,
a four-horned goat
who found himself frozen out by the big cat
contingent from their big car, they stab me in the heart.
Who hasn’t woken up screaming in a four-poster elephant herd?
When we fell in love, the consequences for the Human Skeleton
and the Bearded Lady who operates a printers’ guillotine
were simply dire.
Now Arachne is wearing what looks like ecclesiastical attire.
She hauls herself up through the rigging while the big cats adjourn
to their big caravan to ponder the laws of exponential decay
- and exponential return.
III
Forty years ago we realized that our impulse to be open
to pretty much anything may not run to the Feejee Mermaid (half-guppy,
- half-gibbon)
any more than a dead saint who may still sweat
the Precious Blood so beloved of Pius IX, poor sod.
I imagine Barnum taking umbrage
at the suggestion he’d staged Sherman’s march
as a diversionary tactic. The unicorn Forepaugh turned out has
- the clover-slobbers.
The umbrella-mouth gulper
is an eel that can take in damn nearly an entire clover-field
but, like yourself, probably doesn’t perform fellatio
and probably isn’t impressed by an unbitten
Wyandotte’s felt head with its eye still bright as a button
the geek holds up to the incoming crowd. That same Hungarian Dance music
by Brahms. It’s pretty clear Sherman was heading for Moscow
the way he eased his way with pig-grease
even before the carpet-baggers
would reveal themselves most by what they most revile.
At least everyone in a circus crowd accepts he’s no more than part of the
- rank and file.
IV
Forty years from the first time we heard the strains of that Hungarian
Dance by Brahms and did our best not to picture Jumbo hit by an
- unscheduled freight train
in a marshalling yard in Ontario, Arachne was making straight the path
over a mud-bath
while Sherman gathered his unruly
troops with a drum-roll
usually associated with a firing squad. You and I had hardly gone
- beyond our first peck
at a Coney Island frankfurter stand when I spotted the Norwegian bareback
artiste with one foot on the unicorn-sire
and one on Barnum, as we’d come to know the chief impresario.
While the spotlight would ballyhoo
in a figure-8 over an elephant folio
poster announcing General Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind,
- the Swedish nightingale,
the Bearded Lady never lost her cool.
Arachne’s insistence that an aerialist is not an acrobat
but a fallen angel serves only to perpetuate
your idea that manna from heaven
may be found to an unprecedented degree in Gray’s Papaya at
- Eighth Avenue and West 37.
V
Forty years to the day when a trawl through Jumbo’s stomach would
- have brought up keys,
nuts, screws, washers, bolts, brass tacks, geegaws,
a bag of coins with which Judas Iscariot
had been bought off for his part in the Papal masquerade
by that poor sod Barnum, or Dan Rice,
complete with performing pig. You and I know what it is to have a
- protective layer of ice
to stave off that greater freeze, know that it’s not an out-and-out hoax
when the Bearded Lady enters the blade-box
to be sawn in half. That may not be a spurt
of blood as such but we know this is no less a blood-sport
than when Arachne ran into a little impediment as the crowd
- inched into the tent.
Our impulse to apply yellow Centaur liniment
to Jumbo or his cousin, Toung
Taloung, was ill-founded, a wrinkling of the nose coupled with
- a looseness of the dung
being a sign of croup in the mahout. It was strictly of her own accord
the Bearded Lady was cut into quarto
and bound in stillborn calf-hide
like your run-of-the-mill Feegee Mermaid or Pickled Punk malformed
- in his formaldehyde.
VI
Forty years of Barnum trying to establish the cost per unit of promoting
- Commodore Nutt
as the new Tom Thumb, of Arachne’s working without a safety net
at any moment likely to foreground the rot
in erotica. What must have made Arachne finally see red
was the realization that, at the 1846 Papal Conclave,
Pius IX had overseen the Bearded Lady being sawn in half
by the moderate and conservative factions. For it would surely not be lost
on Pius IX that an aerialist
is no mere acrobat, given his powers
of infallibility, don’t you know? Forty years of Jumbo showing his prowess
in the one-handed handstand
while some geek simultaneously decapitates a rooster. The tune
- that will come to haunt
me as Lucifer leads the “come in” and the geek spits the head into
- the front stalls
will rise above the big cat calls.
It’s that same old Hungarian Dance tune
played on a cornet from a unicorn that once grazed the dunes
in all their vagaries. We took it as a signal for Frog Boy and
- the Human Chimera to wreak
vengeance on Barnum for being such an out-and-out control-freak.
VII
Forty years to the day since Sherman set off from Atlanta for Savannah
- with his big caravan
of big cats, top dogs, a performing pig named Lord Byron and, no less proven
in battle, the Missing Link, Frog Boy,
the Human Chimera and the Human Alligator. Barnum still
- insisting this isn’t a decoy
to distract us from some main event. Your insisting, meanwhile,
- this was chalk
from Arachne’s hands on my pants. Some days it looked as if
- Lucifer might stalk
a raggedy-ass lion
to pull down the news from behind the headline.
It was 1867 when the frankfurter trend
took off on Coney Island and it must indeed have marked the end
of an era to a goat with four horns,
never mind the first unicorn
Forepaugh had turned out under the unicorn nomenclature.
The Missing Link and the Human Alligator
now found themselves going off behind the generator truck
to work up their new trick
while I found myself checking for symptoms of croup
in both the Norwegian bareback artiste and Arachne, then the new girl
- in the trapeze-troupe.
VIII
Forty years of Forepaugh or Dan Rice or Barnum IX heaping
- ignominy upon ignominy
really doesn’t mean
we’re all of a like mind as to how to deal with the rash
of pickpockets at a matinee, never mind the crash
in the marshalling yard in Ontario that thrust my little side project
- front and center.
Jumbo would no more truly benefit from Centaur
Liniment than, in the Civil War, Barnum truly brought cheer
to the country with a Pickled Punk in a Mason jar.
It was in Ontario the Norwegian bareback artiste’s triumphing
- over Arachne
as she might over an unbroken
Appaloosa came to a sudden halt. Now the Missing Link prevailed
- over
Dictatus Papae
in the way Gray’s Papaya
has prevailed over Papaya King.
I know your propensity for believing Barnum was no more subsumed
- by Ringling
than Lee was routed by Sherman’s Savannah campaign
but you’ve got to admit the “come in”
is an effective way of consigning a crowd to the peripheries.
It was in Ontario you and I would first find a way of staving off
- that even greater freeze.
IX
Forty years after I stumbled upon the Norwegian bareback artiste, herself
- without a stitch,
helping Barnum to make a pitch
for the upcoming gigs at Gethsemane and Golgotha, I found
- Arachne forcing mere
glogg down the Good Thief’s throat. Forepaugh, meanwhile, in an
- unpublished memoir,
would admit to having hired the gang of pickpockets
that fleeced the matinee crowd. I imagine you as a mahout lying
- under a spigot
in Coney Island and wrinkling your nose
as you pull down the news
behind the headline that you’ve finally had your first peck of a frankfurter.
Forty years since we set up winter quarters
in Florida and the Bearded Lady was cut into duodecimo,
not even the elephant folio could subsume
Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind the way Sherman took in Atlanta.
What you found on my pants on Coney Island
wasn’t chalk but rosin, don’t you know? I suppose that, prior to the
- St. Louis hippodrome,
the hope had been that Arachne’s spiking her red wine with equal parts rum
and potato akvavit
might allow her to bounce off the Appaloosa’s rosin-dappled safety-net and land on her feet.
X
Forty years since Sherman was attacked by Confederate guerillas from the rear
and you and I first settled into our starring roles in our own little raree
show cum snake-oil
circus it’s pretty clear we’ve found a way to foil
most guerilla attacks by making a pre-emptive strike on the “citrus crop.”
I’m no more interested in an Arachne showing me the ropes
than in a Norwegian bareback artiste and her umbrella-mouth gulper eel.
I imagine a Norwegian bareback artiste, as recently as 1864,
- setting the Papal seal
on a Mason jar in which is suspended the first (and last) Syllabus Errorum.
Who hasn’t woken up screaming in a forest of four-poster pachyderms
where thin-skinned mahouts from their howdahs
incite us to winter in Florida?
The joint funeral of the Norwegian bareback artiste trampled
- by her Appaloosa
and Arachne, who fell to her death in a hippodrome in St. Louis,
reminds us no Bearded Lady nor Human Skeleton will prink
less than the Human Alligator or Missing Link
for if Jumbo succumbing to a rogue train in a marshalling yard truly marks
- the end of an era
it also truly allows us to remake ourselves as Frog Boy and
- the Human Chimera.
